


quema

by glassedplanets



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Violence, Fighting Kink, M/M, Neither Enemies Nor Lovers Exactly (But Close), Post-Series, Questionably Erotic Attempted Asphyxiation, Sexual Content, Soul Society/Hueco Mundo/Living World Relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28082574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassedplanets/pseuds/glassedplanets
Summary: (v., 2p sg. imperative): burn.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 24
Kudos: 99





	quema

**Author's Note:**

> how 'bout that catman renaissance, huh.
> 
> detailed descriptions of fighting/injuries include descriptions of bleeding, though it's fairly in line with canon's level of violence.

Hueco Mundo thrums with life among its scars. Well – perhaps not _life_ , but it is full of motion and growth, of beings that cling to existence with all their will. It makes him feel immeasurably small and far too old in an odd paradoxical way; something about flat black skies and bone-pale sand invokes the memory that he was once younger, like realizing the kitchen table used to reach his ribs and not his knees.

In a rush of vertigo, Ichigo reckons with the sheer absurdity of what he's doing. Hueco Mundo stretches around him in pale slopes all the way to the horizon, equally infinite in all directions. He doesn't even have a way to orient himself, he realizes with an internal wince; last time he'd had Nel, and trouble had been easy enough to sniff out. Now, he can't even find the hulking ruins of Las Noches anywhere on the dark horizon.

He ends up picking the moon as a point of reference; it's never seemed to move, so it’s as good as anything else in this barren place. He could ask for directions, maybe, he thinks as he sets off. The idea is kind of absurd: _Hello, I'm here to fight the madman with blue hair. Can you point me in the right direction?_

Damn. He should have asked Urahara for a map, or… something. Nothing from Urahara is ever a guarantee, nor is it ever free of strings, but it might have netted him something more than getting spit out of Garganta in the middle of nowhere in a world that is the embodiment of the middle of nowhere. But either way, the first Hollow he meets with enough of a personality to hold a conversation will be a good—

A slight change in pressure whispers behind him. Ichigo's only warning past that is the rasp of steel being drawn.

Ichigo draws Zangetsu and turns, blocking the strike one-handed. There's enough force behind it to strain his arm and all the muscles in his ribs and back; unrelenting, an overhead strike meant to cleave.

"Grimmjow," Ichigo grinds out, and what are the odds? What are the _fucking odds?_ A world housed in infinite space and Grimmjow finds him minutes after he half-topples out of thin air? "How did you—"

"You're on my turf, Kurosaki," Grimmjow says, almost coldly. "Of course I'm gonna know. Your reiryoku's like a thunderstorm."

"Sorry," Ichigo says, the shock of _this_ kicking his words firmly into the realm of the facetious. "Can't do much about that."

"Cut the shit. What are you here for, Soul Reaper?"

His eyes are the same flat steel as his blade, unyielding and sharp. Honed to an edge. They're only a handspan apart, Ichigo realizes belatedly, and his eyes are so bright. Leashed, somehow, with the battle-rage Ichigo associates with him smothered or banked, but still burning. There's a speck of sand glittering on the edge of an eyelash, finer than anything Ichigo has ever seen, and it still pales in comparison to the intensity of Grimmjow’s eyes. Ichigo's thoughts collide, haphazard: weighing whether he should disengage or press forward, considering the incongruously delicate lines of Grimmjow's brow and nose, marking the downturn of his mouth, watching the muscles of his half-bare chest for a twitch that would betray his intentions.

It's not a bad start to the fight that Ichigo owes him, but it's certainly not what he'd expected. He's not even sure anymore just what he had expected, coming to Hueco Mundo unannounced, but here he is arriving at the intended result: Zangetsu still grinding against the length of Grimmjow's sword, locked gaugingly together.

Ichigo owes him this, he tells himself firmly, this is what he came for, and he pushes back against Grimmjow's blade. There's more curiosity than intent behind it.

“No answer? Fine,” Grimmjow sneers, and he lowers his eyes to the point where their blades cross. “Had two of these last time. What’s the matter? You lose something?” The world tilts, and the air sits like iron in Ichigo’s lungs. But no– _no_. Zangetsu’s warm wrappings are familiar under his palm. Even the press of Grimmjow’s strength is familiar. Grimmjow meets his eyes once more, and Ichigo finds them far too sharp. “Huh. Guess you did.”

“No,” Ichigo grinds out, “I’m here to fight you,” and Grimmjow—

Grimmjow yields.

He pulls through the rest of his strike so quickly that Ichigo barely has time to adjust to the disengage; Grimmjow's sword comes to rest loosely at his side, chased by the unearthly shriek of steel on steel, standing one full pace away.

And in another half-blink motion, a cold steel swordpoint chills the skin underneath Ichigo's chin, reiryoku humming through the blade against his bones, and with this threat Ichigo submits to Grimmjow's regard – though not completely, because instinct still brings his sword up once more to press a warning in return against Pantera's spine.

( _When_ , Ichigo thinks in a distant, delayed corner of his mind, did Grimmjow get this fast?)

"You ain't here to fight," Grimmjow says, low. He applies pressure; Ichigo tips his chin up to relieve it, and feels the atom-fine point dimple his skin anyways.

"That's exactly what I'm here for," Ichigo counters. He pushes against Grimmjow's blade; not enough to knock it away, but enough to reassert his presence.

"Nah," Grimmjow says, "when you're here to fight me, you'll know." His voice is quiet, low; there's a warning quality to it that Ichigo can't quite figure out. "Here we fight on my terms, Kurosaki. And right now my terms are for you to take a fuckin' hike."

" _What?_ "

Ichigo stares. This tight-leashed calm has no place among his memories of all the other times he's seen Grimmjow framed between the bold lines of their blades. But then Grimmjow's lip curls, and _finally_ , Ichigo has something familiar to grasp.

"You heard me," Grimmjow says, with another thread of familiarity: the edge of a snarl in his voice. "We'll fight when you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Don't come to me reeking of pity. It's disgusting."

He pulls his sword back once more in a quick movement – _so quick,_ so quick that the rush of air stings, and he brings Pantera around in a clean arc, reishi lifting off the steel in a soft haze before he draws it back to be sheathed. The sound of guard meeting scabbard is final.

"Figure it out, Soul Reaper," Grimmjow says, taking one more step back, and finally the familiar manic edge of a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth before he disappears in a burst of air and reiatsu.

Belatedly, Ichigo realizes that there's a new cut in his lip, just over one incisor.

* * *

Nel catches him a bare handful of minutes later, just as Ichigo is running over a mental checklist for his return trip; his arrival in Hueco Mundo undeniably made too much of a ruckus to go ignored. She barrels into him like a train and squeezes till he starts questioning whether or not his real organs will get damaged by proxy, and then she fusses, sisterly, brushing off some sand and picking at his clothes till the thick folds sit more neatly. He answers her questions steadily: what he’s doing here (she gives him a very stern look when he says Grimmjow's name), how he’s doing (pretty well; it’s mostly true), how he got here (with Urahara’s “help,” please don’t ask), how everyone else has been (also pretty well, and still adjusting).

In the end, she invites him for tea. It doesn’t occur to him until much later that the sensible thing to do probably would have been to decline and slink quietly back to the Living World before anyone else noticed.

The “tea” ends up being an odd affair, a strange court held under the void-mirror sky and ringed by a near-perfect circle of sharp, bare trees that jut up out of the sand. A dozen or so Arrancar arrange themselves around a table with no particular shape at all; a massive slab of smoky crystal, the same kind of thing that the trees look like they’re made of. Ichigo ends up with Nel at one elbow and Grimmjow half a fractured meter away on his other side, with Arrancar sprawled in two misshapen arcs to meet Halibel’s seat, directly across from him, framed by the elegant claws of the largest tree. Maybe it’s a place of honor. Ichigo can’t really tell. Each place is set with mismatched cups and saucers; he’s pretty sure they’ve been hewn from bone, carefully sanded to be nearly translucent. They’re also empty, and so is the large teapot, a sordid-looking thing carved from part of a horned skull. Overall, it seems like a bizarre ritual to cling to. Or emulate.

“You can tell Soul Society that we’ve agreed to their meeting,” Halibel says, without preamble or context, once everyone has finished settling their swords against their seats.

“Meeting?” Ichigo echoes, blank. He tries not to glance helplessly at Nel for some kind of explanation. Halibel only nods, her eyes unreadable behind the yellow brush of her hair.

“Why yes, Ichigo, the meeting with Soul Society,” Nel says, a little too loudly, “that was requested of the Arrancar representing Hue–”

“He’s not here about that,” Grimmjow scoffs. “Clearly doesn’t know shit. Get on with it, Halibel. Explain to this Soul Reaper what he’s gonna do for us as an apology for _trespassing_ , then kick him out.”

“Grimmjow,” snaps the woman to Halibel’s right, “you _will_ speak respectfully to her.”

“Fuck off,” he sneers, and Ichigo really, really wishes these teacups had anything in them so he could at least have the excuse of taking a drink to stave off the awkwardness of what’s clearly evolving into a minor feud suited to dinner with extended family.

“Still touchy about being número seis?” One of the younger-looking Arrancar – Holey or Moley? something like that – leans around Pesche and Nel, and smiles in sharp mockery at Grimmjow.

The air triples in weight. Grimmjow leans right back over the table, and he growls: a rippling thing, unmistakably animal, with a curled lip and flat, dangerous eyes. The kind of sound that raises hair on the back of Ichigo’s neck in some ancient, deeply buried hominid response to another predator. Sweat beads on the Arrancar kid’s forehead instantly, her skin paling under the force of his attention; Ichigo's skin prickles, the sensation rolling down his back at this unfulfilling promise, this fight he won't get. At least not now, apparently. But it itches anyways, the urge to meet that heavy presence with his own and, like millstones, wear away until nothing is left.

“Ask me about numbers again,” Grimmjow snarls, “and I'll tell you to count how many claws you got in your guts.”

And against all fucking odds, things go smoothly from there.

* * *

“It’ll be a month,” Grimmjow says, breaking an awkward, ten-minute silence as he comes to a halt. Evidently this is far enough away from anything to be suitable for Descorrer. “Tell them Halibel said we’ll do their meeting one month from today. Six of us and no more. I won’t leave Hueco Mundo with no one left to guard it.”

Plenty of sensible questions occur to Ichigo: When did Soul Society even send a message? What’s this meeting supposed to be? Whose idea was it, Captain-General Kyōraku’s? Someone else’s?

Instead, Ichigo asks, “ _You?_ Guard it? _”_

“Me,” Grimmjow replies, sneering. His teeth flash in the moonlight. “Like I said, this is _my_ turf. Halibel and and Nel can do all the sweet-talking they want, it won’t mean shit if Quincies or Soul Reapers or fucking humans decide they want to walk in here like they own the place.”

“So you’re...” Ichigo feels dazed, for what must be the umpteenth time in a few short hours. “What about Nel? Does she–”

“ _She_ brings home every stray that twists her bleeding heart,” Grimmjow snarls.

“Other Hollows? Other Arrancar?” Ichigo asks. The moon shines so brightly on the pale dunes, an albedo not unlike fresh snow, and Grimmjow’s face is painted in bright, harsh strokes. “Wait– that means when the Jagdarmee was here, you—”

“Yeah,” Grimmjow says, his lips now twisted dangerously; the teeth he bares seem sharper, somehow. “I don’t need reminding.”

"Then why didn't you come earlier?" Ichigo asks. His grip on the situation is rapidly slipping, no matter how hard he digs his fingers in. "We– I would have—”

Fought with you. Fought _for_ you. Been glad to see you. Ichigo chokes on all the things he can't quite say; he feels dizzy, reeling. Information overload. No – not information. Something else.

"You think the same thing wasn't happening in other places across Hueco Mundo? _You_ just happened to leave before I could get to you.” Grimmjow scoffs, a short, dismissive sound hissed through his teeth. “Mala suerte. Would’ve loved to properly fuck you up along with those Quincy shits. And the rest of your trespasser pals, too."

"Don’t think that I wouldn't have ripped my way back to Hueco Mundo if I'd heard that you hurt my friends," Ichigo says, and then pauses. "Though you probably would've hurt them just to get me to come, huh."

Grimmjow's response is a nasty grin; his uncovered cheek dimples from the force of it, and he says, "In a heartbeat."

But you didn’t, Ichigo thinks. Grimmjow could have easily killed Urahara and Orihime and Chad along with that Quincy and he didn’t. Maybe it’s a low bar to clear, but a dangerous swell rises in Ichigo’s chest in spite of it; gratitude, and respect, and some strange sibling of hope. An odd sort of anxiety crawls over his hands, but Ichigo makes his decision before it can take root too deeply. He looks at Grimmjow – manic grin, eyes bright and wild, his fingers still curling and uncurling reflexively where they’re hooked loosely around Pantera’s hilt – and lays a hand on his forearm. His skin is so cold. There’s no body heat radiating from him, even though Ichigo’s hand nearly brushes against his hip, near where all of a person’s soft warmth usually lives; instead, there’s just an incandescent press of reiryoku.

"Thank you," Ichigo says gently, "for protecting them when I couldn't."

Grimmjow's grin is snuffed out more quickly than a candle in a gale, replaced by a look of near-complete bewilderment. It lingers, and then Grimmjow's face falls back into careful, detached, sulking boredom. Ichigo lets go of his wrist. His palm prickles.

“Don’t take it too personally,” Grimmjow says. His eyes are bright and harsh, like the moonlight. Too much to look at. Instead, Ichigo watches the muscle in his forearm flex above the hand he shoves resolutely in his pocket, that cold curve that he still feels on his palm. “They were the smaller threat. Situationally useful.”

“And me?"

Grimmjow smiles again: utterly unsettling, so far from kind that it nearly approaches the sentiment via paradox, closing in on satisfaction or some related expression nearby.

“Situationally useful,” he repeats, voice so low it’s very nearly obscene, and electricity crawls down Ichigo’s back. Behind him, the air shrieks and groans, and a void of presence yawns open onto either edge of his peripheral vision, black as nothingness. “Get out of here. I won’t say that again. You’re not getting a fight out of me till you figure it out.”

And with that, the air snaps closed around him like a maw, and Ichigo is left with nothing.

* * *

* * *

* * *

Yoruichi's nostrils fill his entire field of view, followed by the dark spill of her hair and a flash of bright eyes.

"Where's your head at, Ichigo?" she asks. “’Cause it's clearly not here.”

He sighs and pushes at her side till she tumbles easily off of him, rearranging her legs into an easy fold. Ichigo doesn't move further than that, just remains sprawled on his back, eyes staring at the bright unmoving sunlight of the fake sky above him. Yoruichi's gaze on him feels like a knife.

"I don't know why I'm so hung up on this," he starts.

"Because it matters to you," Yoruichi says easily. "Not that you’ve told me what _this_ is, but clearly you care if it's eating at you."

"Yeah, but I shouldn't care this much."

"Aww." Yoruichi sprawls herself onto her stomach next to him, catlike, and rests her chin in one dusty hand. Her smile is smug, bright. "Got a crush?"

"No," he says, and the absurdity of the truth brings a dull hot flush to his face as he mumbles, "Grimmjow wouldn't fight me."

"Hmm?"

Ichigo raises his eyes to the fake sky, feeling his face heat, and repeats, "Grimmjow wouldn't fight me. When I went to Hueco Mundo. To fight him. Specifically."

From the corner of his eye, he can see Yoruichi sit back up again.

"You," she says, "are so dense."

"What? _I'm_ dense?" Indignation brings him to finally sit up. Yoruichi is staring at him with unsettling intensity. "His entire personality is _grrrr, I wanna fight you, Ichigo_ and then he refused to fight me when I went to Hueco Mundo. How does that make _me_ dense?"

"Alright," Yoruichi says, heaving out a sigh, and she sweeps her bangs messily up out of her face. "Let's back up a bit. You went to Hueco Mundo a month ago, right?”

“Yeah, almost. Why?”

Yoruichi looks at him steadily, with steel, like she’s drawing a blade, and she asks, “And this has been on your mind since then?”

Ichigo folds, just for a moment, and looks away from her at Zangetsu’s hilt lying dust-covered in his lax palm, sweat darkening the wrappings.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she hums. There’s no judgement in her voice, or – when Ichigo finally resolves to look up again – in her face, or her posture. Her next question outmaneuvers him; he should be more used to this, to her speed, the sharpness with which she picks apart his weaknesses and draws blood. “Why do you want to fight him?"

The memory comes easily, even amid the thick clotting marsh of other enemies he’s met since he spilled blood in Hueco Mundo, of the other people he’s fought and befriended. He remembers the way Tensa Zangetsu had felt in his hand, like a whisper, slipping so easily between the bone plating shielding the void of Grimmjow’s heart; and afterwards, the coarse hard velvet of his hand and the way gravity had called his body home to the sands; and then once more: his wrist, trembling with exertion and rage, frigid and slender.

"Because I told him I would," Ichigo ventures.

Yoruichi's eyes cut through him to the core, unruffled; they’re the only thing about her left unaffected by their half-hearted spar.

"Try again," she says. Her voice is steel, and for a moment Ichigo is in this bunker's twin below Sōkyoku Hill again, exhausted, driven by the specter of Rukia's coming death. "C'mon, Ichigo."

Yoruichi's eyes are expectant, steady, still as hard and sharp as steel, so Ichigo _thinks_. Takes the problem and turns it around in his head the same way he dissects a sparring match. Looks for his own openings, and the ones he remembers seeing on his opponent.

"Fighting is the one thing I'm good at," he says, feeling like each word is being dredged up from old, dead waters. "Really, really good at. And I want to fight someone when the stakes aren't… what they've been up till now. And I want it to be him.”

"Why him?" Yoruichi asks, gently. No judgement. Just the soft easing of a splinter out of his palm.

Ichigo leans back on his hands and tips his face up to the flat light streaming down. It's a good question. Why Grimmjow, indeed? It's not that everyone else is unwilling; nearly all of his friends have been generally happy to do some mutual shit-kicking over the past two or so years – has it been two? three? maybe three, hard to keep track – pending Living World obligations and Soul Society reconstruction efforts and other manifestations of life simply going on, and sparring with Yoruichi is usually instructive when she’s not being intentionally infuriating. He’s not lacking in people to trade blows with.

“I guess we’ve got unfinished business,” Ichigo says, but the words sour as they leave his mouth. That’s not quite it, either.

The way Grimmjow had brushed him off with careful calculation in Hueco Mundo stings. It stings harder than unfinished business ever could. Stings like – of all things – the frigid tone of Rukia’s voice the night he watched her follow Renji and Byakuya to her death. But then— to think that he’d been banking on some kind of friendship with Grimmjow is absurd. Nel’s the one he’s friends with. Halibel’s the one he’s brokered a respectful, careful peace with. Grimmjow is something else entirely. Not a friend or an ally.

But not an enemy, either, he thinks, and like a lungful of winter air he remembers: his first response to seeing Grimmjow silhouetted against a flat black void in the ruins of the Soul King Palace was not to take Zangetsu in hand.

Not an enemy. Just someone who wanted nothing more complex from him, all along, than a fight.

The look Yoruichi gives him in turn occupies a realm wholly indecipherable between pity and knowing. She holds him in her gaze, like this, dissected in the space between them, for a span of far too many heartbeats – and then she sighs, then grins, then ruffles his hair.

His reaction is mortifying. He flinches in surprise, far too used to contact only during a fight, and defenseless against the onslaught of her gentle hand and the brightness of her smile. Yoruichi takes it in stride and her megawatt grin softens to match the warm molten gold of her eyes.

"Get some rest, Ichigo. You'll figure it out." She sits forward and raises her eyebrows. “I’m gonna hug you, okay? C’mere.”

And with that warning she leans into his side, her arms worming around his chest, and she squeezes him. She’s overheated and they’re both sweaty; her hair sticks to his neck where she leans against his shoulder. It’s still a nice gesture.

“Thanks,” Ichigo says, feeling awkward, and Yoruichi gives him another squeeze.

“No problem,” she replies easily.

She doesn’t let go. It’s– kind of weird. Not bad, though. He relaxes, just an inch, and leans against Yoruichi’s solid frame. Yeah, it’s not bad. He can feel her lungs expand against him, the way her body thrums with life and motion and warm reiryoku.

“Ichigo,” she says gently, “I know things have changed a lot since we first met.” Ichigo doesn’t get a chance to change the subject – nothing good can come from a conversation that starts like _that_ – before Yoruichi continues. “Don’t beat yourself up over this. He’ll give you a good fight someday, and if he doesn’t, it’s because he’ll realize it’s much more worth his time to be your friend.”

“Thanks,” Ichigo mumbles again. He’s not really sure what he’s thanking her for. For not trying to have a talk about Aizen or Yhwach or his Fullbring or a million other things that have _changed_ , maybe. She just squeezes his side one more time.

“So when is it that you’re seeing him again? The day after tomorrow?”

Ichigo glares fruitlessly down at the top of Yoruichi’s head.

“I’m not _seeing him_ , I’m going to Soul Society.”

“Yeah, but he’s gonna be there,” Yoruichi says smugly, her voice resonant against his chest. Ichigo feels his jaw tense. Yoruichi has a way of making him feel like a child: good, sometimes, when under the warm shade of her affection, but terrible like this, like a sulking, recalcitrant middle-schooler, unable to bite back at her jabs without being found guilty.

“So is Rukia. And Renji. And Orihime and Uryū and tons of other people I actually like. I haven't been to Soul Society since… for ages. I'm going so I can see all of _them_."

“Sure,” she hums, the smile plain in her voice, “and Grimmjow.”

Ichigo sighs. He lets Yoruichi squeeze him one more time, sticky and sweaty but certifiably not bad, and he concedes, very quietly, “And Grimmjow.”

Yoruichi pauses for a moment, and then says, "For what my opinion is worth, Ichigo, I think this is a good thing. Kisuke and I know the Arrancar aren't our enemies, and you do too. It's time Soul Society acknowledged it. They make good friends. Keep them close."

"...And my enemies closer?" Ichigo tries.

"No," Yoruichi replies, and looks at him evenly, almost pityingly. "Just keep them close."

She lets him up, then, with another bright smile, and together they clamber half-stiffly back up the ladder to the shop itself. Ichigo loses himself to the tired post-workout haze of a good training session; he inhales the meal that Yuzu had painstakingly packed up for him (like she always does) while slouching against the kitchen counter, the edge of it digging comfortably into a sore spot on the outside of his thigh.

It’s an ambitious undertaking, Ichigo thinks. This whole meeting thing. Too late, maybe, but ambitious; and better late than never, he supposes. _And_ a total miracle that his accidentally sort-of-illegal trip to Hueco Mundo hadn’t been considered an act of war, _and_ that Halibel had decided to treat him as an emissary for Soul Society instead of letting Grimmjow disembowel him for illegal felony crimes, or something. Restlessness born of normality, driven to the extremes – it had ultimately been exceedingly childish to barge his way into Hueco Mundo and demand a fight, but there’d been nothing left to do. He’d tried to live his Living World life. Kept working for Unagiya, won her kid over by practicing soccer, helped his sisters study, finished high school, deferred university enrollment. Stared at the deputy Soul Reaper badge on his nightstand constantly.

And now he’s here. Now they’re _all_ here. Urahara had “accidentally” “let slip” that Soul Society intends to offer aid to Hueco Mundo, to help rebuild. Ichigo thinks back to Grimmjow’s wary snarl, to Halibel’s delicate caution, and wonders if they’ll accept.

Wonders what Soul Society could want in return.

His mind wanders to unsavory places. The population in Soul Society had plunged during the Wandenreich’s attacks. Hueco Mundo’s, too. But the balance of souls has always weighed between the Living World and the two spirit worlds, and Ichigo would not put it past—

No. Perhaps before, he would not have put it past Central 46 to order mass killings – konsō cleansings, whatever, it amounts to the same thing – of Hollows, to send spiritually powerful souls straight into Soul Society. But things feel _different_ now. Not just the new Captain-General, but everything. The Gotei 13 are much more weary and wary now, and a little softer for it. He wouldn’t put it past Captain Kurotsuchi to have bizarre Hollow experimentation plans or whatever, but everyone else really is on the level. There’s too much to gain from peace with the last of the Hōgyoku-made Arrancar.

Including friendship, Ichigo thinks idly. Yoruichi was right. It really doesn’t make sense that it’s taken this long for Soul Society to reach out to the Arrancar. They'd all been played by Aizen, after all, and they’re all far too similar to the Arrancar to brush them aside like this. Ichigo feels it keenly: not only in the echoing thrum of his sword against the multitudinous facets of his soul, but in so many other ways, too.

If it hadn’t been for… well, for many things. Too many muddled things to think about, propped up in Urahara’s tiny kitchen. But it would have been nice to go back to Hueco Mundo properly after Aizen’s defeat, and lend his hands to help in whatever way he could. To talk to Nel, make sure she and her brothers were okay. And – he squirms internally at the confession – even to make sure Grimmjow was okay. To work words into him, rather than the tip of his sword. They might have been friends, sort of, if things had been different.

It’s _frustrating_. But here’s a chance to fix things, belated or not; no more half-hidden Descorrer in Urahara’s basement, just to slip away for a chance to repay someone the oddest favor he’s ever owed. A chance to let the Arrancar come to Soul Society and show everyone that the Visored and the Arrancar aren’t so much two sides of the same coin as they are two pen-strokes of the same word. A chance to remind them all that humans are what link all of them together.

Ichigo aches with the sheer hopefulness of it. Going to Soul Society. Visiting Hueco Mundo. Spending time with Nel when the world _isn’t_ embroiled in a horrible crisis. Seeing Renji and Rukia more often. Chasing low-level Hollows with Rukia again, sprinting over the rooftops of Karakura. His palms itch in anticipation; the weariness is chased out of his limbs.

The slow surge of energy nudges him to make up his mind. Ichigo slowly pads through the quiet shop, thick summer sunshine heating the rooms with liquid-gold light, and calls, “Hey, Urahara?”

“Yes, Mr. Kurosaki?” comes the reply from down the hall, and Urahara’s placid, saccharine grin pokes out from around a door.

“Can you tell Yoruichi not to come down? I want to do some—” He gestures, vaguely, but the sharpness in Urahara’s expression makes it clear he was understood.

“Of course,” Urahara says, with an inch of gravity to his voice. “Will you let us know when you’re finished, or would you like me to come fetch you?”

“I’ll come back up.” Ichigo nudges open the bit of hinged wood – not substantial enough to be called a door, really – and stares down at the familiar bare dirt that unfurls below the shop. “Sorry if things get messy up here when I’m… you know.”

“You say that every time, Mr. Kurosaki,” Urahara says, not unkindly, “and every time, I will remind you that your reiatsu will not harm us, no matter what shape you take.”

“Still,” Ichigo insists, and slides down onto the first handful of rungs. “I know it’s a lot.”

Urahara’s smile is genuine this time, a little tired, and soft around the edges.

“Never too much for this household. I’ll let Miss Yoruichi know that you’d like to use the training room alone.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

* * *

* * *

“Stop sulking,” Rukia hisses, throwing him a sharp look.

"I'm not _sulking_ ," Ichigo hisses back.

“You are absolutely sulking,” Rukia whispers fiercely. “What’s going on with you two?”

“Who tw– _ow!”_ Rukia’s elbow feels sharper than her sword, and it is only for the sake of _her_ dignity that Ichigo doesn’t start a brawl right then and there, in front of each of the thirteen captains and countless other Soul Reapers. “Fuck– _Who?_ ”

“You and _him_ ,” she mutters. Ichigo stares, utterly nonplussed at first and then with mounting dread as she makes a gesture absolutely not suited to her rank: she bares her teeth, screws up her nose, and rakes the air with one clawed hand by her cheek. Across the loose circle of assembled Soul Reapers, Byakuya’s dark eyes flash with both disappointment and warning in their direction. “That Hollow. Yoruichi told me.”

“Grimmjow? What do you mean going on? There’s nothing going on.” Ichigo adjusts his shihakushō where Rukia's stiletto-knife of an elbow had skewered him, and winces. “Yoruichi told you? There’s nothing, Rukia.” He tries not to sound petulant, and mostly fails. “He wouldn’t even fight me.”

Rukia's eyes flash as she leans in and whispers, vicious with victory, " _See?_ You're sulking."

She's spared his retort as the air before them suddenly bulges outwards, heavy and distorted. A flat gaping maw rips itself open before the gates of Seireitei, strips of reality grinding apart, and flat nothingness spreads to frame the party of Arrancar they've all gathered here to greet.

Politely greet, Ichigo thinks, hopes, prays, as the attentions of thirteen captains, their lieutenants, and a handful each of their highest-seated squad members sharpen to the heavy point of a blade. More than just a few wary hands tighten over hilts.

Halibel steps forward first, her eyes skating with neat precision from face to face to face. Cautious, Ichigo thinks, to the last; only at her nod do some of the same odd crew Ichigo had taken metaphorical tea with follow. The two fracciones (Roly? Poly?) are a stark counterpoint to the Soul Reapers, each clad in their own way, each distinct from another and from the former espadas. Nel looks serious and composed, wearing a neat, long coat, stark white in this sea of late-afternoon sunlight on flat black, her bright hair falling gracefully over her shoulders. Beside her, Grimmjow's chest is bare under his jacket, the perfect hole in his gut utterly defiant. _Not one of you_ , says the set of his jaw; his eyes find Ichigo's to whisper, _caught you looking._

Halibel inclines her head, slow and regal. A slight shift behind her catches Ichigo's attention; the tightness of Grimmjow's mouth is clear even from a distance, and Nel is wearing a look of pointed serenity. Ichigo is almost certain that he can see Nel's heel grinding down on the top of Grimmjow's foot. Beside him, Rukia shifts; the air around her cools, just slightly.

Keep them close, Yoruichi’s voice echoes. Keep them close.

* * *

He’d intended to spend some time with Rukia after the formalities had released them from their responsibilities (which is to say, standing by politely while the Captain-General spoke cheerfully and casually to Halibel, and his lieutenant looked like she was composing a list of painful deaths for each faux pas), but she’d already whisked Orihime away, elbows linked and heads bent together. Renji had been overtaken by Nel, her cheerful voice distinct over the reluctant chatter starting to rise up from the slow cautious mingle of Soul Reapers and Arrancar, and Ichigo finds himself slinking away silently towards the emptier edges of forest, where he can sense flickers of people but not see them, where the pressing din will die down behind him.

His mind wanders; his feet carry him to the outskirts with a whisper of shunpo. Seireitei still feels oddly, uncomfortably bare. Empty. He hasn’t been back to Soul Society since soon after the end of the war, and that had been exceedingly uncomfortable too – watching Soul Reapers still picking through the ruins for old keepsakes, for anything that could still be saved.

It’ll be nice to watch it rebuild. Probably. The reconstruction efforts are concentrated in the very center of Seireitei and are slowly spiraling outwards, if he's remembering right, but it feels weird. He can see scaffolding stitched throughout some of the central buildings he only sort of remembers seeing before they were shattered, but closer to the outskirts and to the Rukongai proper, buildings still lie collapsed, as if caught in a sigh. It will take years to reverse this damage. It's worse than any earthquake or typhoon he can recall, in a way he can't quite put his finger on.

And it’s _empty_. Hauntingly, silently empty. The voices of dying, panicked Soul Reapers, tinny through an old phone, echo between his ears; his fingers curl into fists, as if motion alone can stave off the memory, and he fills his surroundings instead with the rasp of sandals on hard-packed dirt. He considers, briefly, angling back towards the heart of Seireitei to find Rukia or Uryū or even Renji to maybe coax out a spar, but the rhythm of his strides has grown too comfortable to break and he lets his mind wander into nothingness as he walks on through rubble, silent as the grave save for his footsteps.

The silence breaks not with a whisper, but with a hum of displaced air and a stifling wash of reiatsu. Ichigo’s hand flies straight to Zangetsu’s hilt as he turns, and the motion is immediately stilled twice over: once by his own hand, finally recognizing the soft cool slide of pressure that flows behind him, and again by a corpse-cold fingers, skin as unyielding as the edge of his blade.

“Sneaking off on your own, Soul Reaper?” Grimmjow asks, his face impassive. He doesn’t look like the cat (ha!) that caught the canary; there’s no trace of bloodlust or rage in his posture. Just that same, oddly-leashed… something.

“I’m not sneaking off,” Ichigo replies, and shakes off the hand on his wrist. “I could give you that fight, though. If that’s what you’re here for.”

"Nah," Grimmjow replies, and drops both hands into his pockets. His eyes glitter. "I don't want all of Soul Society knowing what I can do."

"...So that's _not_ what you’re here for," Ichigo says, somewhere between question and statement. An electric itch sits under his skin; his wrist burns.

"Not this time," Grimmjow replies, grinning, and his teeth flash sharply. He turns back to the path Ichigo had been following: lined with trees adorned in full early-summer greenery, foliage shimmering with life, hard-packed dirt a rich, dark ribbon broken by dappled sunlight. “What’s over here? Soul Reaper secrets that us Hollows shouldn’t get our claws on?”

“No idea,” Ichigo answers honestly. “I didn’t want to mingle, so I walked out this way.” Grimmjow starts walking before Ichigo even finishes his sentence, each pace long and quick, and his boots scuff intentionally at the dirt to leave uneven furrows after each step he takes. Ichigo watches him, utterly bewildered, and then catches up with a rush of reiatsu under his feet. “Hey! Where are you going?”

“No idea,” Grimmjow replies mockingly, and with a crackle of charged air, he’s gone.

Ichigo doesn’t even stop to think, just gives chase.

Time blurs; Ichigo focuses all of his attention on the bright flare of Grimmjow’s reiryoku as he sprints sharp weaving lines deep into Seireitei like a net, and then bursts out into Rukongai. He catches flashes of faces as he passes by: startled, laughing, joyous, wary. The districts, too, flash by too quickly for him to orient himself; the only direction on his compass blazes relentless and white-hot, sharp, biting.

He catches sight of Grimmjow only a handful of times, and it feels as if it’s only because Grimmjow allows him to catch up. The edge of a grin, a flamelike wisp of hair, a flicker of white fabric among a sea of dark shihakushō. He’s _fast_. So fast. It’s not just his movements; there’s a weight to all his power that feels different.

And this — it’s _fun_. Ichigo realizes, after some time, that he’s grinning. After everything, _everything_ , he is grinning. There’s a strange joy in this. Chasing just for the thrill of it. Running just because he can. _This_ is what he wants: blood rushing in his veins not because he’s fighting for his life and for the lives of those he cares about, but because he’s _not_.

They’ve looped back closer to Seireitei when Grimmjow’s reiryoku halts and then plunges like a muffled ember, as if he's hiding from everyone except Ichigo. Or maybe Ichigo is just far too sensitive to the prickling taste of his reiryoku right now. There are two more small pinpricks near Grimmjow's tamped-down brightness: other Soul Reapers, not anyone that Ichigo knows. With a surge of strange dread, Ichigo rushes forward once more.

Shunpo carries him to Grimmjow’s side, itching with anticipation, but Grimmjow is just… standing still. Hands in his pockets. Gaze tilted downslope towards the two dim little flames of reiatsu.

There are two Soul Reapers facing off against each other in a large, empty clearing between hills, soft grass growing where the trees don’t encroach. Grimmjow’s eyes track them with absolute focus, and Ichigo takes the opportunity to study him, however unsubtly.

He hasn’t really changed much. His hair is a little bit longer, maybe, or maybe he’s just wearing it a little differently. He looks completely unruffled by their chase, and by comparison, Ichigo feels sweaty and gritty and dusty but _alive,_ like he’s finally shattered a pane of glass between himself and the world. With a jolt, Ichigo realizes it’s nearing dusk; it had been early afternoon when the Arrancar had arrived. They’d– he’d chased Grimmjow for that long? Shit, would anyone be looking for him? For either of them?

But the soft stillness of dusk pushes those thoughts away, and Ichigo finds himself entranced by the Soul Reapers sparring. They’re clumsy; very new to this, clearly, and even from a distance Ichigo can tell they still don’t know what to do with their zanpakutō. Asauchi, he remembers. Still blank. Still waiting for each Soul Reaper to scream loud enough that they can form an echo. Their motions are stiff and mechanical, extremely amateur, but even still Ichigo can’t look away; it’s like watching young children play, enthusiastic but unskilled.

Grimmjow scoffs in clear disappointment when the taller Soul Reaper gets clumsily disarmed, and the shorter one lunges forward awkwardly to close the gap and shout in victory.

"You can't learn shit if you're not fighting for your life," Grimmjow comments, dismissive, and his nose is wrinkled with displeasure or haughtiness or some imbalanced mixture of both.

His fingers curl against Pantera's sheath, thumb hooked loosely in the crook between hilt and guard; the waning evening sunlight paints his mask a warm soft lavender, paling the ends of his hair to crown him with a strange luminous color there is no word for, and Ichigo thinks… _huh_.

“Don’t be too harsh on them,” Ichigo says, trying to feel more– to feel less— to not dwell on it. “They’re clearly brand-new to this.”

“If they were Hollows, they’d be easy prey,” Grimmjow replies. “Nice snack for some Gillian out there.” His fingers curl idly against his sheath. “There’s no learning for us. You either kill or you die. No coddling with swords.”

“Soul Reapers don’t get teeth or claws,” Ichigo points out. “That’s why we have swords.”

“Soul Reapers,” Grimmjow says, low and intent, pointedly insulting, “are more willing to treat those swords like people than they were ever willing to treat _us_ like people.”

There’s something about that _us_ that makes Ichigo think Grimmjow meant to include him. He suppresses a shiver, but only just. Ichigo could point out many things: that Soul Reapers usually don’t, like, eat other Soul Reapers? and that zanpakutō actually _are_ like people and in spite of that so many Soul Reapers don’t understand, and that... Grimmjow is right. It’s so very easy to disregard the humanity of an Arrancar. Especially when Soul Reapers exist to destroy Hollows mindlessly, indiscriminately. Why stop to treat them like people? Much simpler to just cut them down and let the great cosmic balance churn on.

“Is that why some of the Arrancar joined up with the Quincies?” As he asks, Ichigo watches Grimmjow’s fingers curl and relax again.

"Nah, less complicated than that."

"The Quincies were—”

"They were at the top of the food chain. Some of Aizen’s rejects wanted the _protection_ –” Grimmjow’s sneer is ugly, audible. “–those bastards were pretending to offer. As simple as that. At least Nelliel kept her sense of pride and didn't grovel at their feet."

"You respect her," Ichigo says.

"She's soft," Grimmjow says, low. "Like you are."

"You _like_ her."

Grimmjow lets out a noise that’s halfway between scoff and snarl. Ichigo bites back a smile.

“And you?” he asks. “Did you stand up to them out of pride or loyalty?”

Grimmjow turns to face him, dirt scraping under his heels, and any lightness the conversation might have been accruing is gone. He looks nearly livid – but not quite. Something strange lurks behind his eyes. Ichigo doesn’t know the look well enough to give it a name.

“Pride,” he snarls, “doesn’t keep you alive. Loyalty doesn’t keep you fed.”

“It did when you were an espada.”

“Don’t you _ever_ presume to know what that was like.” The heat in Grimmjow’s eyes explodes into an inferno. Black crawls up his fingertips, reiatsu gathering in blue-white slivers. Ichigo’s skin starts to prickle but he holds; he holds. Grimmjow has not struck yet. “Just because you let Soul Society yank on your leash however they want, get you to tidy up a mess for them–”

“I didn’t do it for Soul Society,” Ichigo says, very quietly. “Any of it. All of this–” He gestures down at himself, his knuckles flashing between the black of his Fullbring. "I only did it so I could protect my friends. If we'd been reversed, if I'd been a Hollow in Hueco Mundo when Aizen came…" He lets the sentence dissolve there. The air around Grimmjow’s fingertips warps visibly, reishi evaporating into thin blue mist; Ichigo knows this is a threat, that he should reach for Zangetsu, should _move_ , should do something, but instead, Ichigo nudges one more time. “We– do things, for the people we want to keep around us. Don’t we?”

“Maybe you do, Soul Reaper. What would I know?” The look Grimmjow levels at him is suddenly frigid. All that heat, collapsed down into one dark, bitter thing. “I’m just a Hollow. You can’t fill the kind of hole I’ve got.”

“Wouldn’t stop me from trying.”

Grimmjow turns away at that, baring the bone against his cheek, but not before Ichigo sees the bitterness spreading into the set of his jaw, his brows.

The two Soul-Reapers-in-training start another round of their awkward, clumsy sparring. It’s easy to tell that they’re following a pattern; strike, block, strike, block, marching out their hits by rote. It looks nothing like the way Ichigo feels when he’s fighting: fluid and assured, Zangetsu comfortable in his hands. Even at the very start, he doesn’t remember feeling this same clumsiness.

Grimmjow breaks the silence again.

"I resent the sword," he says. He's serious, his eyes focused on the wavering line where the sun sinks into the trees. It feels, bizarrely, like a confession; an offering on not-quite-enemy territory, a half-mangled olive branch. Briefly, Ichigo’s thoughts sift together; he wonders if Grimmjow had to learn, too, after trading teeth and claws for a blade.

"Pantera?"

"You remember the name?" Grimmjow levels him with an appraising look; his eyes are still distant, though, his attention focused elsewhere. Maybe inward. "I'm impressed. The sword isn't Pantera. Pantera is me."

Ichigo looks at him blankly. Grimmjow's brows knot more deeply, the soft purple dusk casting a striking shadow across his face, licking into the teeth of his mask.

"This thing–" He raps his knuckles against the handsome wood of the sheath. "–is for show. Aizen wants us to be reflections of Soul Reapers, but they could never be what we are. You didn't think? A zanpakutō changes when released. So do we."

"You keep saying that.” Ichigo glances away; he feels embarrassed for some reason. For no reason. “We. Us. Like I’m not a Soul Reaper.”

"Nah." Grimmjow's eyes don't shine in the dim light, save for the odd muted flash behind his pupils. Tapetum lucidum, Ichigo recalls; like a layer of mother-of-pearl at the back of an animal's eyes. "You're somethin' else entirely. These Soul Reapers are _them_ to you, too."

It's quiet, save for the rustle of soft air through trees, the distant buzz of conversation as the two student Soul Reapers wrap up their drills, clapping each other on the back and laughing at their bruises.

"If Aizen created you to be swords," Ichigo starts, ignoring the warning of Grimmjow's ever-deepening frown, "then he meant for you to be—"

"Used," Grimmjow finishes pointedly, and his lip curls. His teeth do shine in the dusk, sharp with promise.

 _Held_ , Ichigo thinks instead, and bites the edge of his tongue.

The two student Soul Reapers head off towards the outskirts of Seireitei without a backwards glance at them, for which Ichigo is grateful. He’d wandered off to avoid talking to anyone, after all, and he’d still been saddled with Grimmjow’s company in spite of it. It’s been oddly unintrusive; Ichigo wouldn’t call it welcome, exactly, not in the same way he welcomes the warmth of his other friends, but it hasn’t been terrible. Loaded conversations notwithstanding.

“I wonder,” Ichigo says, “what it would really look like, to be right between Hollow and Soul Reaper. To actually find that balance between one and the other. That’s what we were supposed to be, after all.”

“Balance is a tricky thing, ain’t it?” Grimmjow says. The last remnants of sunlight play off the flat hard rims of his irises, and they bloom that same color that Ichigo still has no word for. “Changes with the environment. With your opponent. There’s no _perfect hybrid_ , or whatever shit Aizen was full of when he played mad scientist. Just the right thing at the right moment.”

“I heard from the captains that Tōsen was so far Hollowfied, he had a Resurrección.” Ichigo watches Grimmjow’s face for a reaction, and sees nothing but the vague displeasure he’s been wearing for most of this conversation.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow says. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

Ichigo decides to press. Just one more time.

“Zanpakutō have shikai and bankai.”

“You asking if we do too?”

Grimmjow’s eyes are sharp. But hell, when have they ever _not_ been sharp? His gaze bears the weight of judgment, and rage, and a deep-buried flicker of… something. Fire, maybe. Whatever it is that Ichigo saw each time they fought.

“Ulquiorra could do it,” Ichigo says quietly.

Grimmjow lets out a harsh, dismissive noise, hissed out through his teeth.

“Figures.”

“Can you?”

Grimmjow gives him a long, long look, and then the color of his eyes, dappled in the deepening twilight – alexichromic, some poetic chunk of Ichigo's mind finally supplies – darkens as he smiles.

“Guess you’ll have to find out one day, won’t you?”

* * *

* * *

* * *

It's still weird. Fuck and hell, it is so shittingly weird. Not Rukia or Renji or anyone else – that’s been fine. That’s been _great_. Being able to hop over to Soul Society whenever he wants and without Urahara’s _“help”_ has been fantastic; using the bunker under Sōkyoku Hill has been even better. The end of the summer had been one of the best in his memory, comfortably splitting his time between Soul Society and the Living World, the weeks spilling over into fall with two or three cautious trips to Hueco Mundo just to say hi to Nel.

But this – this is _weird_. If anything, _Nel_ is the only one who should get to visit the Living World. _She's_ the one Ichigo actually likes spending time with, tiny-baby-shape or not. And yet here he is, with none other than Grimmjow sulking behind his shoulder under the eaves of a konbini, watching the rain with an odd wariness.

The girls (well, not _girls_ , but — what, women? sounds so clinical) had taken off like a rocket after a surprisingly-not-disastrous dinner and left Ichigo in the dust, their only parting shot a text from Orihime: _Meet you back at Mr. Urahara's shop in a bit!! We wanted to show Nel some stuff downtown and get some coffee! ☕💕 Have fun with Grimmjow ok? 🥰🥰🥰💖✨💖_ and if it were literally anyone else, it would have been the most heinously sarcastic text message he's ever received.

But no. She's serious.

 _Yeah hope grinning doesn't kill me,_ he replies, and then adds, _Lol Grimmjow not grinning_ , and Orihime replies with another slew of various hearts and 😂 before Ichigo even manages to pocket his phone.

Ichigo bites back a petulant sigh and says, "We can head back to Urahara's, if you want. The others will be back later."

"Whatever gets me out of this _thing_ faster," Grimmjow replies, snarling.

"Urahara's it is," Ichigo says, and sets off without checking whether or not Grimmjow follows him.

He looks _weird_ in a gigai. Figures Urahara had leapt at the chance to make a gigai that can house a Hollow, though. Something about reishi inversion and the Visored and other stuff Ichigo had neither understood nor paid attention to. It's probably half the reason Urahara had _insisted_ on including the Living World in with the newborn diplomatic ties between Hueco Mundo and Soul Society, which is something that Ichigo had found out about approximately two hours ago when he'd answered a knock on the door to find a grinning Urahara, an exceptionally smug Yoruichi, a deeply sullen Grimmjow, and Nel's arms crushing him to her chest.

 _Diplomacy!_ Urahara had cried jovially, flicking open his fan, and Ichigo had met Grimmjow's eyes, and for one moment – one half-sliver of a moment – he’d known without shadow of a doubt that they were of one mind, both dreaming of grinding Urahara's face into the sidewalk.

But Rukia had jogged up with Orihime in tow right at that moment and Urahara had taken the chance to immediately disappear – and Yoruichi too, though not without a thoroughly exaggerated and unmerited wink – and now Ichigo is wrapping up the most bizarre evening of his life.

Ichigo sneaks over a glance as Grimmjow keeps pace with him on the sidewalk, shoes kicking up rain. No weird eyeliner on the gigai, for one. Or the mask. Obviously. Grimmjow would read as near-blandly human if it weren’t for his eyes: they still look dangerous, heavy-lidded and disarmingly perceptive. Nel had looked perplexingly almost-human, too; both of them with candy-bright hair, but at least Nel looked like she belonged on the cover of a magazine, like she should be setting the internet on fire, impeccably dressed and perfectly poised. Grimmjow just looks like a laughable caricature of a greaser.

“Hey– this way.” Grimmjow doesn’t turn; the rumble of traffic through rain is oddly deafening. Ichigo reaches out to grab his arm and rethinks the motions just before his fingers brush against the dark jacket he’s wearing. It would be– weird. It would be really weird to just _grab_ him. Ichigo is still haunted by the chill of his skin under Hueco Mundo's bright pale moonlight, the solid braid of muscle he'd felt. Instead, Ichigo cuts across to his other side and veers him off to the left, like a sheepdog. “ _Hey_. It’s faster to cut through the park.”

Grimmjow shoots him another sullen look, but he complies. And on it goes: the weirdest fucking night Ichigo has had in a long time, or possibly _ever_ if he revises his scale now that he understands so much more about his life and his lineage. At least Grimmjow’s not the worst walking companion in the world; they keep pace with each other, and the hush of rain fills the air between them with steady murmurs, keeping any awkward silence at bay.

The park is empty, likely thanks to the rain, and it’s dark enough to wash all the color out of Grimmjow’s bright splash of hair. Weird, just how dark something so _colorful_ can look in the right conditions. The lamps in the park are dim and orange, drawing out long shadows around them, but it’s been a long time since Ichigo was a child and scared of things that lived in an ink-dark brush left on the ground. Other shadows, though… Ichigo thinks of a crawling black cloak, and shadows ripping open the air, and then he carefully thinks of nothing at all. Grimmjow’s footsteps thump soundly next to him, and the rain isn’t quite cold enough to sting.

Grimmjow breaks their silent, mutual agreement to not pretend they’re friends when they’re somewhere near the heart of the park.

“So you had two swords before,” he hums musingly, “and now you’re back to one.”

Ichigo stops dead in his tracks. His heart stutters; his chest feels empty.

It feels like an eternity before Grimmjow finally stops walking and turns, his brows furrowed, and for a second the shadows drape over his brow, over his eyes, staining his hair, and Ichigo is pierced by a lance of fear so profound, it feels like he’s been electrified.

 _Every time you feel joy, you will recall my words_. Yhwach’s voice slides through his memories like fine silk, in the same familiar cadence as Zangetsu-not-Zangetsu, in the same familiar scraps of shadow. _Every time you feel joy_.

“Hey. Kurosaki.”

Joy. This isn’t joy.

Grimmjow takes a step forward, into the soft rain-broken light of a street lamp shining orange. His eyes are two flares in the dark, pupils liquid black as he searches Ichigo’s face.

“Fuck off,” Ichigo manages. He shoves his hands into his jacket and squeezes, tight enough to pop his knuckles. “I don’t owe you an answer.”

Grimmjow’s eyebrows slowly rise. He takes another step closer. The rain is softening to a haze, now. He looks sharper in it.

"Come on, Ichigo.” He doesn’t look like he’s wheedling or mocking; his face is set in a much more analytical look. “I'm not your friend, but now you can run off and tell Nelliel and your mad scientist that we just talked, like _pals_ , and I didn't gut you." And _then_ he grins, full of teeth. "Not yet, at least."

Ichigo doesn’t think, just lunges. There’s a fear and a fury in him that’s near-blinding, pushing out all rational thought as it burns. Grimmjow is faster. He slides out of the way with terrible silent grace and grabs Ichigo by the jaw, unrelenting.

“ _Fuck off_ ,” Ichigo repeats. The rage-fear-other _burns_ , incandescent. He practically has to spit the words out around the vice-grip on his chin; he wraps a hand around Grimmjow’s wrist with the intent to push it away, but Grimmjow’s grip is unyielding. Whatever strength this gigai has far outweighs that of any human his height and build.

(He’s not really that much taller than Ichigo. It’s in how he holds himself, in the loose easy length of his limbs. Like this, they’re eye to eye.)

“Answer the question.”

His cold fingertips – incongruously, humanly soft, when Ichigo knows with exacting certainty what will and will not cut his real skin – press against Ichigo's jaw, the roots of his teeth. He is held in the hands of a creature that has spent centuries of death gorging itself on lost souls, and yet not a single instinct in him rises in protest.

“ _Why?_ ” Ichigo wrenches his head out of Grimmjow’s grip. He feels like there’s a hand around his throat instead. “So you can call me soft because I lost something? Fuck you.”

Grimmjow doesn’t step away. Very slowly, he lowers his empty hand. His eyes don’t leave Ichigo’s face.

“I’d be a hypocrite,” Grimmjow says, “if I told you that losing made me soft.” Ichigo’s mouth is dry. He can feel his hands shaking. Grimmjow keeps _looking_ at him with an even gaze, as if Ichigo’s not halfway to falling apart. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Some thin, brittle thing snaps under Ichigo’s breastbone at his tone of voice. Neither harsh nor demanding. Just even. Free of judgment. Ichigo hauls in a lungful of cold, humid air.

“Turns out Mom was a Quincy,” he grinds out. The words don’t feel like his own. “Zangetsu was broken, in bankai. I reforged it. Then Yhwach– took— something.”

It’s a mess of disconnected facts, thrown between them like a petulant child throws a toy. Grimmjow’s eyes – they catch the light like reflectors on a bike that passes by, luminous crescent moons in the dim park lighting. Like a cat’s. Good joke, Urahara. Nice addition to a gigai.

“Hollow,” Grimmjow says, turning one hand palm-up, then the other, “and Quincy. Right?”

Ichigo nods once. It’s all he can manage. Surprise creeps through him; it’s a wonder Grimmjow made any kind of sense of that.

“Which one’s gone?”

Ichigo stares. Apparently for too long. Grimmjow moves forward again – _again_ , too fast to track, especially distracted as he is – and grabs Ichigo’s forearm, yanking his hand out of his pocket. The drizzling evening air doesn’t even feel especially cold anymore; neither do Grimmjow’s fingers. His whole hand feels numb as Grimmjow’s fingertips dig into the knot of nerves and blood vessels and stuttering reiryoku pathways at his wrist.

Grimmjow’s reiatsu flares through the gigai, like the flex of claws. Ichigo’s rises up in response; less of a flinch, more of an echo. A smile – if it can be called that – blooms slowly across Grimmjow’s face.

“Hollow’s still there,” he says, his voice almost low enough to be called a purr. “Good.”

He drops Ichigo’s hand. It falls, strings cut, at his side. All Ichigo can do is keep staring.

“ _What?_ ”

“Hollow’s still there,” Grimmjow repeats. “Thank fuck we’re poison to Quincies, or Yhwach would have taken _that_ fight from me, too.”

And with that, he takes one step back, and then another, then turns, and Ichigo finds himself gawping at Grimmjow’s retreating back, lit by bright splashes of rain reflecting park lamps.

“Wait,” Ichigo blurts. “That’s the wrong way. Go right.” He shakes himself of the odd temporary – what, paralysis? indecision? something else? and jogs up to Grimmjow, feeling clumsy and disconnected from his own body. “The shop is this way. _That_ street takes you to the soccer field.”

“Can’t sense anything more than a meter away in this shit body,” Grimmjow snarls. “Can’t believe I agreed to this.”

“Why _did_ you?” Ichigo asks. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder. What the hell could have possibly motivated Grimmjow to shove himself into a human-adjacent body?

“Nelliel can be persuasive,” Grimmjow mutters, looking resolutely ahead.

Ichigo stares.

“Right,” he says. “She can be.”

The haze condenses back into a proper rain again by the time they finish cutting through the park; Ichigo’s jeans are drenched to the ankle, but Grimmjow had had enough forethought to wear thick leather boots. More likely, Urahara or Yoruichi had dug up some clothes for him and Nel. (Explains why Nel looked cool enough to turn heads, and Grimmjow looks weird enough to make people cross the street.) It had still been warm fall the last time (or, well, the first time) the Arrancar had come to Karakura town. Five whole years ago. No, more than that.

Time doesn’t really pass differently when your soul is outside your body. He almost wishes it did. The three months spent inside the Dangai, the frantic, harried mess of the war — nothing really feels like it’s taken the amount of time it should have taken. The math says his body is supposed to be twenty or so years old. It’s still a struggle to answer when someone asks how old he is.

Five years. Five years ago, he’d felt Rukia’s sword push through his chest. And then one thing had led to another, and now he’s walking the streets of his hometown side by side with someone who’d tried to kill him.

Grimmjow slows to a stop when Ichigo does; the crosswalk before then beeps a slow, regular warning as traffic rumbles through the halfhearted rain, still undecided between a soft haze and light drizzle. Ichigo wonders, idly, if Hueco Mundo is a desert in more than just its dunes, if this rain is something Grimmjow and Nel can only feel here. If this is even enjoyable for them, the way Ichigo daydreams about hot dry summers sometimes.

"Why don't you have any body heat?" Ichigo finally asks. As intrusive of a question as he can come up with in return for… _that_.

Grimmjow snorts.

"I'm dead, genius. Or did that slip your mind?"

"Yeah, I'm aware," Ichigo replies, "but you're human-shaped right now."

"I'm still dead," Grimmjow explains, impatiently, as if he's talking to a simpleton. "Don’t have one of _these_ – _”_ He turns and jabs a finger at Ichigo's chest; Ichigo finally, _finally_ manages to block before he can connect, pushing Grimmjow's frigid, rain-dampened wrist aside. "–to make me nice and warm." The rain catches street lamps and headlights and it feels like Grimmjow's eyes take all of that light for themselves, in turn; dark but luminous and so, so very inhuman.

“I guess you should take it up with Urahara next time,” Ichigo says carefully. Anything to not prompt Grimmjow to swat at him again. The idea of his hands, pressed against—

“You feel wrong to me,” Grimmjow says, “if that makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t, thanks. And don't touch me.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Ichigo knows he's made a mistake. In one quick motion, the heel of Grimmjow's palm presses against his sternum, fingertips spread in five loose points, and Ichigo is rendered utterly immobile.

A rattling chorus of _don't, don't, don't_ trembles up through Ichigo's throat, but it dies somewhere on the back of his tongue. Grimmjow is far too close. Close enough that Ichigo should feel the warmth of a human; he should feel the same pleasant buzz as when Yoruichi jostles his shoulder, or he ruffles his sisters' hair. Cold rain pools at the collar of his shirt and spills over, rolling down his back slowly, not at all matching the shivers that run rampant over his skin.

Grimmjow's hand is freezing even through a shirt, but it's not the temperature that's startling. The touch – the casual pressure of a palm over his chest, like it's not abnormal at all to reach for the cavern that houses a human body's most vital organs – is what's haunting. His fingers flatten from five cold pinpricks to something much more solid. Ichigo almost wants to check if his shirt is wet, clinging to his skin, but that would mean taking his eyes off of Grimmjow. And _that_ feels like a concession he cannot make.

It doesn't feel bad. Not even when Grimmjow takes what is by all means a threatening step forward. It doesn’t feel _bad_.

“All wrong,” Grimmjow says. His voice is low. Headlights flash, drenching the curve under his eye in garish teal-green, and for a fraction of a heartbeat it’s like the real Grimmjow is looking at him with a mixture of disdain and incomprehensible interest. “Like you’ve eaten the sun.”

Grimmjow is testing the waters. Ichigo thinks he might be failing.

This is weird. This is bad. This is _dangerous_. There's dewy mist clinging to the side of Grimmjow's cheek that should be masked. His fingers push harder against Ichigo's chest, as if he's trying to topple Ichigo over, but there’s not enough force behind the motion to do anything except assert his presence here.

Grimmjow’s fingers flex. With a wave of low, rolling dread – no, not dread; something else – Ichigo realizes that his hand is planted where the hole in his chest should be.

“Don’t do that,” Ichigo says. His voice sounds wrong to his own ears. “Not unless you intend to actually fight me.”

“In this body?” Grimmjow jerks his chin downwards. “What a joke."

“You keep putting it off,” Ichigo continues.

“I’m not putting _shit_ off,” Grimmjow fires back immediately. “I had a condition. You’re not fulfilling it.”

“Then what,” Ichigo asks, his chest constricting as if water were rising around him, “wrong time? Wrong place?” Grimmjow’s fingers flex again. A lance of — _something_ jolts down his spine. “Name it and I’m there. There’s a bunker under Sōkyoku Hill if you want to do it in Soul Society and not here. Fuck it, I’ll fight you in Hueco Mundo. I don’t care.”

“Getting warmer,” Grimmjow says, inexplicably, and with that he finally moves his hand. It doesn’t feel like a weight has lifted; paradoxically, it feels like something is missing. Ichigo’s skin crawls. “I’m done wearing this thing. How far to Urahara’s place?”

“Uh,” Ichigo replies, his mental footing not so much gone as it is obliterated. “Not– it’s straight down this way, then a left at the next cross-street, then further on a bit. Not far. Why won’t you fight me? I thought that was what you wanted. You would’ve shoved your sword straight through me last time if Nel hadn’t interrupted.”

The crosswalk’s tone changes; Grimmjow shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye, pulls his jacket tighter, and then sets off across the street.

“Getting colder,” he calls over his shoulder, and Ichigo grinds his teeth as he follows, rain whispering over the drumbeat splash of footsteps.

* * *

He wakes up the next morning to phantom pressure against his chest, his jaw. It feels like an ache in his skin, and when he brushes a sleep-heavy hand over his face, he feels nothing; no twinge of pain, no hand to be knocked away.

The faint bruise only shows itself after he showers and shaves, tucked against the edge of his chin; he has to tilt his head back all the way in order to see it. So faint it looks like a shadow, like a smudge of ash or dirt.

It fades all too quickly.

* * *

* * *

* * *

Reiryoku flutters. Distant.

The chamber under Sōkyoku Hill is massive; Ichigo is easily a few kilometers from the ladder leading back aboveground, but like this, each particle of reishi stands out to his senses like rain stilled midair, and the font of reiryoku pushing through air and reishi and all of the reiatsu he’s shed so far feels like a tempest.

This is — well, this is kind of a conundrum. There’s a reason he does _this_ alone, usually; Shinji and Kensei are far too valuable to be pulled away from their duties, as are the rest of the Visored. Yoruichi tries, she really does, but she doesn’t quite get it the way that the Visored do. And if Yoruichi still struggles, then he’s not going to ask his other friends to deal with this.

And Orihime’s dealt with this enough. More than enough.

But if there’s anyone Ichigo doesn’t mind exposing to the rippling shred of reiatsu he generates, it’s _him_.

Ichigo waits. There’s no mistaking where he is in this space, not to anyone with the faintest ounce of spiritual awareness. Anticipation flickers under his breastbone. It’s taken most of his concentration to get to this point; he’s not just going to let this form dissipate for nothing. And Grimmjow, of all people, isn’t going to hem and haw or clutch pearls about it. Ichigo bites his lip and shifts his weight, adjusts his grip on Zangetsu. Grimmjow wasn’t terrified of seeing his mask. Probably the first person aside from the Visored who didn’t react to it with fear or horror. Confusion, sure, but that had evolved into joy so quickly that it didn’t even really count. He’d been _excited_. Ichigo had shown him what he’d thought was his ugliest self, and gotten sheer delight in return. Not that bloodlust is a great yardstick.

And now Ichigo wonders what he’ll think of this: not a Soul Reaper with a mask anymore, just a Hollow without one. Ichigo feels his pulse steadily, inexorably, start to race.

“That’s new,” Grimmjow says.

Ichigo barely sensed him move. Dust rises around Grimmjow’s ankles in a sadly vain attempt to mark his speed and just how fucking fast he must have moved to cover the distance between the ladder and _here_ , Ichigo has no idea. Grimmjow tips his chin up at Ichigo; his eyes are bright and calculating. Dangerous as ever.

“This?” Ichigo glances upwards at the horn that cuts through his peripheral vision, and wills the adrenaline to not lance through his veins with such intensity. “Not really. You just saw it in a slightly different way.”

“So it’s new,” Grimmjow repeats. His reiatsu thrums, and it reverberates in Ichigo’s chest like a low bass thump, imperceptible to his ears. “You really do look the part now.”

He hears the whisper of Pantera leaving its sheath, watches Grimmjow's lips move, feels the explosion of reiatsu, and yet he still barely manages to bring Zangetsu up in time to guard.

"Fast," Grimmjow notes.

 _Fast_. That’s Ichigo’s line. He was already near-impossible to track earlier; with his Resurrección, it might as well be instant teleportation, for all Ichigo had seen the movement. He’d barely had time to brace for the Resurrección itself. The flat light completely washes out the bone-warmth of the crown on his brow, but it makes his hair impossibly bright, almost painful to look at. Reishi shrieks between them, sublimating in thin air as Grimmjow slides his claws, slowly, against the flat of Zangetsu’s blade.

“You made fun of me for that once,” Ichigo says. Adrenaline fills his fingers, his chest, and he pushes against Grimmjow’s claws and disengages, sweeping Zangetsu in a smooth crescent between them. “For bankai only upping my speed.”

He wonders what Grimmjow is seeing, what he looks like in a Hollow’s eyes. Prey? Predator? Trespasser? Grimmjow tips his chin up and sweeps him with a slow, appraising look, and then he’s gone.

Once more, Ichigo gives chase. Grimmjow’s not running; he’s giving them both room, judging Ichigo’s reach against his own. Ichigo gladly rises to the question and Zangetsu flicks out quick, sharp answers for him, never quite managing to connect with Grimmjow, but marking time, marking space. Grimmjow’s only strikes are defensive, but he’s _fast_. Ichigo’s pulse starts to thunder. He wants to know how this will feel when Grimmjow isn’t holding back. He wants to break Grimmjow out of this bizarre holding pattern he’s been in and _know how this will feel_ , to test his own speed and strength against this old enemy he fought so many times, who pushed him in so many ways.

It burns. He wants to push and test. He wants to feel the same thing he felt back when he chased Grimmjow in Soul Society like a child tearing through a playground, reveling in the unbound thrill of blood rushing just for the sake of it, but Grimmjow still evades him at every single fucking turn – moving just too quickly that Ichigo still can’t land a hit, but he’s got the strange feeling that this is nowhere near the actual limit of Grimmjow’s speed. He’s holding back far too much. And just as he thinks it—

 _Fast_. Fuck. He’s so fast. Ichigo feels the hard-packed dirt impact against his back before his brain can catch up to make sense of the movement, of the press of Grimmjow’s leg sweeping his feet out from under him, the weight of his reiryoku, coiled over him, and a black-eyed scream inside his heart shrieks _weak, weak, weak, do not submit to these teeth_.

Grimmjow kneels over him with no regard to the ways in which they touch: the thigh slanted over his chest, the weight of hips meeting each other. The last thing to properly register is Grimmjow’s hand around his throat. Breath stills in Ichigo’s chest. It’s meant to restrain, not to strangle; his palm is unyielding but not crushing, worked with careful calculation underneath the remnant collar of his Fullbring. The pads of his fingers dig into the soft muscle at the back of Ichigo's neck rather than tearing into his windpipe or neatly cutting open his jugular, his carotid. _But I could_ , the gesture says, and so do Grimmjow’s eyes.

The lack of malice is what throws him off. Ichigo doesn’t know what to do with that. Not to any degree. Grimmjow's bare-vertebra tail is moving; not lashing in aggression, but moving evenly with interest. Like he's on the hunt. Slowly, very slowly, Ichigo uncurls his fingers from Zangetsu’s hilt and watches Grimmjow, patient even though he doesn't want to be, patient even as Grimmjow's hand flexes around his throat. The pseudosystems mimicking a human body beat against that heavy palm, his pulse an unsubtle mimicry of life echoed by the sinusoidal thrum of reiryoku; he can feel the drag of not-air into his not-lungs, and the crackling rush of not-adrenaline that fills him steadily.

Grimmjow's thumb-claw pricks into the skin under one ear, and Ichigo feels an odd coolness as blood wells up against his skin. Grimmjow's eyes lower, almost thoughtful, and then he sits back as if to admire his handiwork. His gaze catches on the base of Ichigo’s neck, right where his palm is, and some inexplicable wires in Ichigo’s brain just— _cross_ , birth a flare of sparks, and in a split second Ichigo’s pulse is racing in a much, much different way.

With deliberate slowness, Grimmjow reaches over with his other hand and runs the pad of one fingertip along the underside of Ichigo’s horn. It’s a strange sensation; it’s just bone, no nerves, but Ichigo can feel the intent pressure of the reiatsu in his claws push against him. Grimmjow’s gaze is intent, too, assessing the shape and weight of him as his finger travels from base to tip.

Ichigo shivers.

The tip of the horn pricks Grimmjow’s finger, and Ichigo can feel _everything_ then: the sharp edge slipping neatly through thick skin, piercing nearly to the bone. When Grimmjow draws away – neither hurriedly nor surprisedly – a pearl of blood remains hanging from the horn, quivering before it starts on a slow path down towards the base.

"You done?" Ichigo asks. It doesn’t sound as lighthearted as he’d meant it.

Grimmjow doesn't reply. Instead, his fingers light on the skin just at the edge of his hair, and Ichigo knows exactly what's drawn his attention: broad, sharp strokes of ink-black that break up the pallor of his skin.

Grimmjow takes his time, and the touch is rough, unforgiving, exploratory. Declaratory. The marks are probably dark enough to swallow any blood Grimmjow's fingertips trail, Ichigo thinks idly. They’d leave behind only the faintest sheen. His touch is like stroking velvet the wrong way: coarse, but not wholly unpleasant. The pressure of his fingers is solid against Ichigo’s brow, the dip under his eye, down along his cheek, and obligingly – perhaps foolishly – Ichigo tips his chin up, baring his throat to claws that could rip him to shreds in less time than he could possibly react, like this.

When Grimmjow’s eyes finally meet Ichigo’s again, they’re filled with the weight of judgment. Disappointment, maybe, that he's allowing this; does he want Ichigo to fight back? He should push harder, then. This isn't a fight. Anymore. Yet.

"You won't hurt me," Ichigo murmurs by way of thin explanation. "Not 'til I want you to."

"Who says I need your permission?" Grimmjow bares his teeth and leans forward, his breath almost as heavy as the palm against Ichigo's neck. "I could rip your throat out." Another breath against his skin. Closer this time. Ichigo's eyes close against his will as Grimmjow's thumb pushes on his jaw, turning his one cheek to the ground, exposing the vital column of his throat to the teeth Grimmjow is still baring.

"You wouldn’t." Ichigo's voice sounds strangled to his own ears. A warm wash of breath sends a new ripple of electricity over his skin, and those crossed livewires in his brain keep sparking, and sparking, and sparking.

"You'd even let me," Grimmjow murmurs, almost mockingly. The movement brings his lips against the newly-exposed skin of Ichigo's neck in the barest brush of contact, and his pulse thuds even harder against Grimmjow's hand. There's enough pressure on his jaw that he can't turn his head back without dislodging Grimmjow entirely, and he _could_ throw Grimmjow off. His center of gravity is off; his guard is down, just an inch.

Instead, Ichigo bites his lip and whispers, "Maybe."

Grimmjow's teeth are sharp. _Fuck_. He doesn't bite down hard enough to break skin, but it still hurts — and all the muscles in Ichigo's body tense, pushing his back up off the sand, and his hands scramble for purchase, for _something,_ and Ichigo doesn’t even think, just twists his fingers into the closest length of hair he can reach and _yanks_ , mean and underhanded.

The low growl he gets in response seems less threatening than it should be. It also brings a fresh wave of hyperawareness as Grimmjow slowly pulls back — _fuck_ , he'd _bitten Ichigo_ and Ichigo has just been letting all of this happen as if it's business as usual, as if there's nothing weird about getting _bitten_ by a Hollow with too-sharp teeth and one hand around his throat. Still.

Ichigo loosens his fingers; every inch of his skin feels raw as Grimmjow sits up, still sitting astride Ichigo's hips, still holding Ichigo by the throat, and Ichigo lets his hand fall off of Grimmjow’s shoulder heavily back to the dirt.

"Maybe," he repeats nonsensically, half-sighing the word. His voice hums back against Grimmjow's palm.

Grimmjow doesn't say anything more, just looks at him with dangerously calculating eyes. And then he squeezes — still not hard enough to hurt or restrain, not really, but Ichigo's head tips back anyways and he forms a word without any sound at all: teeth digging into his lip at the start, tongue arching back to close the syllable. Ichigo stares up; Grimmjow stares down. His claws press against Ichigo’s skin and the sensation makes him want to writhe. Fuck, he's practically panting. This is probably fucked up, somehow.

Grimmjow finally relinquishes his grip on Ichigo's throat; slowly, languidly, one long finger at a time, and he slides his hand down to the dip between Ichigo's collarbones. He pulls the very tips of his claws downwards, tracing the line of his sternum until he reaches the ridge of his Fullbring, just below his collarbone, and then he leans forward. Hair slides over his shoulder and onto Ichigo’s chest, where his once-neat shihakushō has fallen open. It’s warmer than it ought to be.

Ichigo stares at him unabashedly. They’ve never been this close for this long; just fragments of seconds caught in the clash of blades. His face had looked strangely incomplete in the gigai without a mask, but inches from his nose, Ichigo can see nothing but complimentary curves sketching out a shape that’s become familiar. Grimmjow watches Ichigo’s eyes in return, seemingly tolerant, but there’s a shearing edge to his reiatsu that’s building, pushing up under Ichigo’s skin as surely as his hand presses down against it.

A shadow of intent flickers across Grimmjow’s face, and then five lines of fire explode down Ichigo’s chest. Time slows: he can feel every millimeter of Grimmjow’s claws as they sink into skin and closer to bone uncushioned by muscle, every point where blood wells up between clawpoint and rent skin.

Zangetsu is back in Ichigo's hand and pressed against Grimmjow's throat before he can even make the conscious choice to move. His heartbeat is a constant waterfall roar; Grimmjow moves his bloodied hand, sparrow-quick, to wrap against Ichigo's wrist, almost as if he's intent on keeping Zangetsu there.

Vertigo comes and goes in breathless waves. Ichigo can feel the blood on Grimmjow's fingers slowly growing tacky trapped between their skin, and he can feel each breath Grimmjow takes as his chest expands against him, the pace slightly faster than it should be. This isn't a stalemate; it's a crossroads.

"No maybes," Grimmjow says, and looks pointedly, languidly down at Zangetsu's length. “Yes or no, Kurosaki. Make your move.”

Ichigo barely hears him; he's lost in watching Grimmjow's mouth shape the words, his jaw framed by two discordant slashes of blue hair that spill over his shoulders. He's hyper-aware of every point their bodies touch, of the strange cool spill of blood across his chest, the delicate stir of air between them as they exchange uneven breaths.

Not a fight, Ichigo thinks. Anymore. Yet.

He pulls Zangetsu back, slowly enough to make his intent clear; the steel sings as he draws it against the condensed reiatsu of Grimmjow's skin. Grimmjow's eyes darken with each inch until Ichigo nestles the curved tip against the skin just behind his ear.

Grimmjow's breaths beat heavier against him; there's something building in his eyes, and Ichigo wants to know what kind of monster will come crawling out. His blood itches, sings, stirs in incomprehensible eddies, building like a fire with all the wrong fuel.

He gets no warning when Grimmjow reaches his apparent limit, just the half-there twitch of muscle he registers far too late. Grimmjow rears back and pushes Zangetsu away with a snarl, and Ichigo feels more than sees the edge sink into Grimmjow's palm and nick the side of his neck before the hand holding Zangetsu slams into the ground.

The wires aren't so much crossed now as they are an incomprehensible tangle. Grimmjow's teeth are bared in a snarl, one bleeding palm pinning down his wrist and the other fitted against the furrows he'd left in Ichigo's chest, and Ichigo can feel the powerful, insistent pressure of his reiatsu as it weaves through and reinforces his skin.

Ichigo recognizes the burn for what it is now. That simplest expression of life: neither motion nor growth, but hunger. An impulse meant to be fed, he thinks, and he intercepts Grimmjow's other hand before it can swipe away the blood pearling up from Zangetsu's cut, butts their foreheads together hard enough to force out a half-snarled breath, and he kisses Grimmjow for all he's worth.

Grimmjow’s hand flexes against his chest; claws bite into Ichigo’s already-sore skin, his wrist twists in Ichigo's grip. But he doesn’t push away, and Ichigo is flooded with vicious victory, a howl that thrums through his veins, and he tries again – kisses Grimmjow with more of that fire that’s running through him, presses his tongue to Grimmjow’s bottom lip, and then it’s wrenched entirely out of his hands.

Grimmjow kisses in precisely the same way he does anything else: half-reckless, optimized precisely for maximum destruction. Some embarrassing noise rips itself out of Ichigo’s throat. His body howls for more, and he is hopeless in submission to that cry. Ichigo tips his head, gasping into the harsh pressure of Grimmjow’s mouth – and promptly flinches at the unearthly grind of bone on bone, the sensation beyond jarring as his horn catches on the crown over Grimmjow’s brow, and just as promptly Ichigo finds his back flat in the dirt once more, with Grimmjow's claws planted firmly against his chest.

"Watch it," Grimmjow snarls, and his eyes track Ichigo's mouth, his chest, his throat, his eyes.

Ichigo almost wonders if this is an elaborate dream, but knows that's not possible; the dirt is too hard under his back, Grimmjow's weight too tangible, the heat in his gut far too close to all-consuming. Grimmjow's hair is still a bright long spill of blue over his shoulders, the mask still bold and heavy over his brow, but the bone is interrupted by a bright smear of deep red. The blood Grimmjow had left on Ichigo's horn, he realizes, dazed. And that reckless light – madness, or fury – burns unrestrained in Grimmjow's eyes.

"Sure," Ichigo says, helplessly, breathlessly, "yeah," and the word leaves just enough of an opening for Grimmjow to take advantage of; he leans down, and Ichigo drowns.

His mind sluggishly starts to connect the dots. Grimmjow is _warm_. And if he's warm – oh, an entirely different kind of heat floods him as Grimmjow's teeth sink into his lip – then that means Ichigo must be cold. He'd never considered that like this, he would be Hollow-cold, too.

He wants to do this as a Soul Reaper. To see if the chill of Grimmjow's mouth will spark the same relentless thrill. And to know what the press of his mask will feel like – cool, too, or maybe oddly warm – and if it would dig into Ichigo's cheek if Grimmjow does _that_ to wrench a ragged gasp from his throat again. And fuck, even to know what the gigai would feel like, to pretend they’re both just human.

The roar in him is starting to approach a fever pitch, a hum that eclipses any kind of rational thought. If Hollows are creatures of instinct, then Ichigo must be too, like this; reaching desperately for the claws that scratch this itch, for the teeth that mark his jaw. Grimmjow is a hunter to the core, and when Ichigo tips his chin back, overcome, he sinks his teeth once more into the soft tender expanse of Ichigo's neck.

" _Fuck_ ," Ichigo groans, and the sound Grimmjow makes in response is victorious, hot against his skin. Grimmjow drags his palm downwards as he alternates between teeth and tongue, claws pressing against his skin not deep enough to draw blood again, but deep enough that Ichigo is sure he'll see tracks and tracks and tracks. "Oh, _fuck—"_

This is the most intimate touch he's felt in a long time. Maybe ever. Grimmjow's hand slowly stills somewhere near the edge of his ribs and much too far away from where Ichigo would like it to be – he's not even sure where that is, honestly – but the intimacy is in the rest of the equation: in the pliant sprawl of his body covering half of Ichigo's, one bone-plated knee pushing up under Ichigo's thigh; in the slow march of his too-sharp mouth, pressing against already-tender skin; in the marks that will no doubt linger, complimenting the five lines that burn on his chest. In Ichigo's arm around his back, fingers digging with urgency between the wide ridges that cover Grimmjow's spine. In the press of Ichigo's temple against a warm cheek, breaths getting lost in a mess of hair.

He feels alive. He feels the same lightning in his hands, his arms, his thighs, as when he's crossing blades with someone. He still wants to rip into Grimmjow until he finally pushes back. Wants to know where all that speed came from and where it’ll go. How they’ll push each other. Wants his pulse to race in all the ways it can. He aches for Zangetsu’s weight in his hands.

"Hey," Ichigo pants, his fingers curling reflexively, "I want to fight you."

Grimmjow stills. Not with surprise, but with a predator's stillness. Prey in sight.

"Say it again," he breathes against Ichigo's neck. The raw edge in his voice sends another curling spasm through Ichigo's fingers.

Ichigo shifts pointedly and turns to look at him. It's not quite a flush, but there's a concentration of _something_ high in Grimmjow's cheeks; his eyes are bright and dark all at once, though the flat light in this bunker is not as kind to their color as the soft warm sunset had been, what feels like far too long ago and nowhere near long enough.

"I still want to fight you," he repeats. His mouth feels clumsy, like it's the wrong weight. Like something should be pressing against it. He reaches for more words but Grimmjow interrupts him with such force that Ichigo feels heat and salt well up in his mouth, and shortly thereafter, a dull sting. It does nothing to temper the wildfire already raging in Ichigo's chest, and the irreverent rake of claws through his hair only serves as further fuel.

"Again," Grimmjow snarls, and Ichigo really had it all wrong. There's nothing unflattering about the color of his eyes, lit from behind by engines of instinct, of feral joy. Grimmjow's fingers tighten in his hair and Ichigo is helpless to tip his head back once more, baring his throat to the killing machine crouched over him.

"I want to fight you," Ichigo says, and closes his eyes. Grimmjow slides his hand back down, slowly, and rests it in a loose collar around the base of Ichigo's neck. Ichigo keeps his eyes closed. "I want to feel you yielding to me."

"Never." There's a vicious smile in Grimmjow's voice; Ichigo feels the edge of it brush against his lip, where Grimmjow's teeth had split it.

"Fine, then." Ichigo leans up. It's not a kiss, but a rather more broad action than that; one that brings his mouth against Grimmjow's in a way wholly undeserving of the tenderness the word _kiss_ implies. The noise rumbling in the back of Grimmjow's throat is a pointed underscore. "I want to feel you pushing back.” He levers himself up on one elbow; Grimmjow’s mouth is so close that Ichigo’s lips bump against his as he speaks, close enough that Grimmjow could be breathing in each word. “I want to feel your life in my hands–” Another low rumble, like a distant warning. Ichigo feels this one against his chest. “–because I know that I'm not gonna do anything to jeopardize it."

"You're soft," Grimmjow sneers, and the disgust in his face would be nearly convincing if it weren't for the fingers coming up to fit against the underside of his jaw so very carefully. “You showed me pity once. Don't you dare do it again.”

"It wasn't pity," Ichigo says. "Besides, if I had killed you – if I'd stood by and let Nnoitra kill you – we wouldn't be here right now." A bolt of fury crosses Grimmjow's face, wrinkling his nose into a much more genuine sneer. "I want to fight you. You want me to say it again? _I want to fight you_."

"Why?"

The question is loaded. With what, Ichigo doesn't know and isn't capable of figuring out right now.

"Because I _want to_ ," he answers, frustration mounting alongside many other things, heat rising into one indecipherable swell. "Because you're not scared of me. Because you're not a Soul Reaper, or a Quincy. Because I _can_ and it’s not part of a game that anyone’s playing. Because you were right and I feel sorry for myself. I just want to fight you." The urgency has slipped out of his voice; he can hear it. Out of his limbs, too. "It doesn't have to make sense."

"You're soft," Grimmjow repeats. Undeniably still an insult, but his voice is lower now, too. He shifts to rest more completely over Ichigo; his body is a solid, unrelenting line from chest to hips to the careless braid of their legs. Still warm. His hand crests over Ichigo's jaw and one claw presses at the very center of Ichigo's bottom lip. He doesn't resist, lets his lips part. The bite still stings. "And you're useless like this." Grimmjow's voice rests between viciousness and irritation. "You're like putty. You'd let me do anything to you. Where's the fun in that?"

"Plenty of fun in it," Ichigo replies. His limbs are sinking into heaviness even as the heat in his core sharpens. "Maybe I _would_ let you do anything to me. Maybe I want that as much as I want a fight right now."

Once more, Grimmjow snarls, "Soft." So is his mouth, pressing just where his claw had been. "Makes you easier to take apart."

Grimmjow sits back, just enough to press the very tips of his claws against Ichigo’s chest. Five neat points of contact over the flat ink-black circle on his chest. Directly where Ulquiorra had punched a hole through him. Directly where Ichigo would have a gaping void, aching to be filled, if he were the selfsame type of creature as the one bearing down on him now.

(As if he isn’t. He is nothing but a chasm; walls of hunger plunging downwards, bottomless.)

"So then take me apart already," Ichigo sighs, eyes closing, and a wave of near-giddiness overtakes him. He feels so high-strung that it won't take more than any kind of touch for him to completely unravel at the seams, just from the insistent press of hands, teeth, claws. From Grimmjow's mouth against his, slow, like relentless, patient pursuit.

Grimmjow makes a low, soft noise in the back of his throat; neither growl nor purr nor snarl, but a sound much more human than that. Approval. Interest. Invitation. The hand on Ichigo’s chest flattens into a broad palm, overwhelmingly warm this time.

Grimmjow's weight is pressure, not friction, and it's the latter that his body is aching for. When he sits up, Grimmjow's hips fall closer against his, one razor-edged shin still pinning Ichigo's thigh to the ground and the other folded around the crease of Ichigo's hip. It's horrendously vulnerable; Ichigo knows that if he shifts the wrong way, the spurs that curl outwards from Grimmjow's shins and forearms will cut him to the bone.

They tangle together in breath and body, and Ichigo keeps himself in one piece with careful stitches; not quite committing this to memory, but reveling in the knowledge that his skin will hold these touches for however long it can, creased in red heat and the dusk of bruises. Pressure builds between Ichigo’s ribs, a fire lit in each individual particle of reishi that makes up his soul, belching heat, and soon it will be unbearable. For now, all he can do is burn.

"Touch yourself," Grimmjow says; two words brought together like flint meeting steel. Ichigo yields to the rush and closes his eyes. Carelessly, almost as an afterthought, Grimmjow adds, "If you want."

 _I won’t do it for you_ echoes, unspoken, and Ichigo’s mouth goes dry. Of course Grimmjow won’t give him an inch; everything he wants, he’ll have to take for himself. The notion is electrifying. Grimmjow’s eyes haven’t left his; he pushes the heel of his palm against Ichigo's sternum, and once Ichigo's back meets the ground again he drags his fingertips languidly back up upwards, presses against the edge of his collarbones so delicately between the marks he's already left.

Ichigo licks his lips, tastes the sting of that cut, and makes his choice.

It’ll be strange, different, to reach around Grimmjow like this, to chafe the inside of his forearm against the unforgiving curve of Grimmjow’s waist; his shihakushō is already in disarray, and Ichigo pushes fabric aside unceremoniously. The bone plating of Grimmjow’s thighs is softened by the warmth of his body and yet again Ichigo wonders what it would feel like to do this otherwise, to feel Grimmjow's usual chill against his skin, and with that thought he takes himself in hand.

He’s hesitant, at first, but Grimmjow offers no quarter and no judgment. It’s very simple, in the end: the body’s wants can be the spirit’s, too, and Ichigo sinks into those wants under Grimmjow’s weight. His hand moves, familiar yet not, and even with the should-be-awkward weight of another person sitting on his stomach, he’s far gone enough for it to not matter. Grimmjow’s presence is electrifying. Ichigo _wants_ this. There’s no need to overthink it.

Ichigo brings his free hand up around the back of Grimmjow’s hip, unthinking, and Grimmjow moves with it like he’s intercepting a swordstrike: he shifts forward in one smooth movement, his thighs bracketing Ichigo’s chest, and really, they’re both experienced enough fighters to read someone’s body, isn’t that all that this breaks down to? Energy discharged between two parties. Vulnerabilities exposed. And oh, does Ichigo feel vulnerable.

He almost wants to ask for something, for _anything_ , for Grimmjow’s patient-hunter mouth to return to his shoulder or his chest, for his hand to cover Ichigo’s as he works himself over; he thinks about feeling the press of claws against his tongue, still covered in his own blood, or the scrape of teeth against the marks on his chest. Ichigo bites his lip instead, bright pain blooming, and finds his free hand clutching Grimmjow’s thigh, nails grating against bone.

Ichigo’s pulse thuds in his palms and his throat. Grimmjow’s reiryoku presses against him, near-smothering, grinding against his own, and all the friction is approaching unbearable. He doesn’t know when his eyes had slipped closed, only realizes it when warmth blooms on his chin and he blinks, startled. Not warmth – _heat_ , and the lightning flicker of reiatsu. Grimmjow’s fingers grab under his jaw, claws pressing against skin that’s already sensitive.

"Look at me," Grimmjow says, and Ichigo does, looks up at the imperious, calculating gaze kneeling over him, the long stretch of bone hewn from survival, and he doesn’t go over the edge so much as he rips himself open on it.

Ichigo's pulse roars dully in his ears, his body arching desperately up into his own hand and into the weight on his chest, and the first thing he returns to on the comedown is the cold, prickling pressure of Grimmjow's claws holding his chin. The second thing is Grimmjow's hair, drifting lazily downwards as if it had been tossed by some non-existent gale.

"Oh," Ichigo says breathlessly, "fuck."

Latent reiatsu still hangs in the air alongside dust. His shihakushō is still in complete disarray. There’s not really– anything– to clean up. It’s weird. Oh, fuck, it is so profoundly weird. He’s back to normal. Soul Reaper normal. Zangetsu is still lying in a sharp line near his fingers.

And Grimmjow— Grimmjow is looking at him with an odd mix of satisfaction and hunger, with the kind of focus that makes Ichigo think this isn't quite done yet.

"There," Grimmjow says, like he's passing judgment, and he leans down onto his hands over Ichigo, dirt rasping under his claws. His reiryoku flares; with a soft hiss, the Resurrección dissipates, glimmering faintly amid the still-settling dust. Ichigo lets his eyes slide closed for a beat as he hauls in a steadying breath, feeling boneless, hazy fatigue creep up on him from – what? A good fight? This wasn’t a fight.

"There _what?_ " Ichigo finally asks. Grimmjow is nearly nose-to-nose with him now, back to normal too: shorter hair, clenched-jaw bones against his cheek. His eyes are so deeply intense, this close, that Ichigo nearly shivers.

" _That_ ,” Grimmjow says, “is what I was looking for." He doesn't move, doesn't look away, and Ichigo _does_ shiver then: from the chill of his breath, and the heated spark flickering back to life in his gut.

“What?” Ichigo asks again. His face flushes dully, hotly, humanly. He is utterly incapable of connecting whatever dots Grimmjow is seeing; all he wants is for this, whatever _this_ is becoming, to go on. There’s an itch in his chest that hasn’t quite settled.

“Want,” Grimmjow says. “Not obligation.” As if that’s any kind of answer to Ichigo’s muddled, hazy brain; the only word that had managed to stick was _want_ , and the beautiful subtle sneer that accompanied it, a motion he can still taste against his mouth.

“Want,” Ichigo repeats numbly. “Yeah. _Yeah_.”

Grimmjow’s cold skin burns where they touch. Zangetsu sings to him from where it still rests on the ground.

He pushes himself up onto his hands, carefully, carefully, not quite willing to dislodge Grimmjow, but his body is singing with exertion and adrenaline and far too many other things, and he reaches his fingertips back behind him, and reaches, and _reaches_ , and his fingertips snag on threads of reishi caught between air.

“Hey,” Ichigo says, “there’s one more thing I want.”

“What?” Grimmjow asks. His eyes rove down Ichigo’s chest.

Ichigo hooks his fingertips into the air and rips.

“A fight,” he replies, and does two things in quick succession: he bucks Grimmjow backwards so that they both tumble into the waiting jaws of Descorrer, and he seals the exit.

* * *

* * *

* * *

Grimmjow sinks his claws into the sand and _holds_ , slamming reiatsu into the ground to stop his tumbling momentum in a crouch. Behind Kurosaki, Descorrer snaps shut around a void.

 _There_.

There. There’s the steel in his eyes: bright and sparking, selfish, all-too-heated. Grimmjow feels his mouth curl into a smile as Kurosaki walks up to where he’s still crouching.

“Come on,” Kurosaki says, and shoves an open palm down at him. An offer. Grimmjow stares at it, and then up at his face. He’s still flushed, still hazy around the edges. Soft. But soft things only make it easier to get the sharpest claws caught in them.

“You’re on,” he snarls, and wraps his hand around Kurosaki’s wrist and hauls him down.

Sand explodes around them as they move; Kurosaki is back to wielding his big cleaver, and Grimmjow will never, _ever_ forgive him if whatever they did just minutes ago means that he won’t see that fucking Hollow again now. But this is good. That inelegant knife against Pantera’s slim length: it’s good. The weight behind Kurosaki’s strikes has grown. His intent has sharpened. The bizarre swirling mix of his reiryoku is almost nauseating; he can still taste it on his tongue, heavy, and _his_ now. Hollow, Soul Reaper, and a cloying echo of something that used to be there. And underneath that, the odd light smell of Hueco Mundo's sand, the sweat that pearls on his skin, the bright mix of their blood.

“Nice trick,” he says, parrying a delightfully quick cut to his ribs. “Didn’t know you could use Descorrer.”

Kurosaki shrugs and replies, “Guess I’m Hollow enough to do it. You didn’t wonder how I got here the first time? Urahara kept refusing to help, so I played his game and learned how to do it myself.”

“Just for me?” Grimmjow parries another strike, again deliciously quick, and flexes his reiatsu; black crawls up past his wrists. “I’m touched.”

Kurosaki flushes, his mouth set awkwardly, but his eyes track both Pantera’s arc and the flicker of reiatsu over his claws. Right – he never got a proper look, back when the Quincies were trying to fuck everyone over. All the better to cut him with, then.

He brings Desgarrón down in a strike meant to rend; Kurosaki’s eyes widen, bleached gray in blue reiatsu, but he blocks the strike swiftly, assuredly, head-on at first, and then angling his zanpakutō so that Grimmjow’s claws shear off at an awkward angle and he can step in to close distance. Kurosaki moves without thought, just on pure instinct, and the difference between _this_ and that pitiable attempt from before is staggering. Satisfying. Good to know all the bullshit's been thrown out the window.

He reverses on the backswing, brings Pantera back down with one hand and rips his claws upward with the other; Kurosaki is too surprised to exploit the opening and resorts to parrying again instead, albeit more quickly this time. Adaptive and stubborn. Arguably the best qualities to have in Hueco Mundo. Really, shame Kurosaki wasn’t a proper Hollow when Aizen came around. He would’ve torn that usurper and his precious pebble to shreds and used his corpse as a throne.

More and more reiatsu discharges between them, growing into a familiar miasma, a coppery mix of frigidity and bottomless heat and whatever the name is for what happened when they fought with pleasure instead of a death wish.

Grimmjow pushes and goads, and it’s only when he lays open Kurosaki’s cheek nearly to the bone that Kurosaki finally stops fucking holding back and releases his zanpakutō. But only his zanpakutō. Reiatsu gathers around him, dense and endless as it kneels to the atom-rending tip of his sword. It's like dragging a hand through water; ripples gather into a razor wave before him, leaving a vacuum in their wake for all that strength to sweep back into.

Showy as it might be, the sheer fucking volume of the strike is what makes Getsuga Tenshō hard to avoid; Kurosaki's reiatsu shreds the air between them and Grimmjow pushes back with Desgarrón, just enough, just enough. The shearing edge still bites as the explosion they generate washes over them both, compressed reishi seeking entropy as retribution for the audacity of their usage.

Kurosaki meant that blow to kill. _And_ he knew that Grimmjow would be able to stop it. Trusted him to try stopping it, at the very least. The realization is both infuriating and exhilarating. There’s a complimentary strip of raw, bleeding skin crossing his chest the other way, and Kurosaki’s eyes burn.

“No mask anymore, right?” Grimmjow reverses his grip on Pantera and taps the bare jawbone of his mask with the pommel. “No need for the middleman.”

“Yeah, I’ve got one better for you now,” Kurosaki says, and the look in his eyes sparks a consuming heat in Grimmjow’s gut. Kurosaki swipes at the blood spilling over his chin, and then that black needle of a sword darts out again, aiming for a disarm. Grimmjow parries and echoes the movement, but Kurosaki catches on and twists his wrist so that Pantera’s tip slides against one link of the chain that falls incomplete from the hilt. _Clever_. Grimmjow feels his lip split over again as he grins.

Grimmjow sheathes his claws in reiatsu and they meet again, and again, and again, shining crescents of winter sky ripping into black so dark it puts the night above them to shame, and the hungry pit in Grimmjow’s stomach only yawns wider. Kurosaki is _relishing this_. It’s obvious in the set of his jaw, the sharp tracking movements of his eyes; he’s challenged, and it’s clear he hasn’t felt this in far too long. Whatever kind of _friends_ he’s got, they’re clearly not up to scratch if he’s this hungry for a good fight, if he’s so coddled he couldn’t even grasp that he wanted it.

And that form. That other one. The hunger under his skin, the lucid evenness of his eyes, the control clearly honed from honest work – Grimmjow would have honed it from brushes with death and maws more powerful than his – he wants to bring his claws, his _real_ claws, down against that skin and feel the heat of death discharged between them.

Enough fucking around. Neither of them will get anywhere like this: Grimmjow rakes his claws down Pantera and calls her name, and he’s tickled, distantly, by the vaguest wash of irony that they’re back here again. Kurosaki’s eyes flicker with recognition and a touch of that _other_ hunger, the one he either sated or fuelled anew not a handful of minutes ago.

Kurosaki’s speed has improved, but not by enough. Even like this, Grimmjow is faster; if Kurosaki pushes him enough, _really_ pushes him, then there’ll be no contest. And Kurosaki was right – he _had_ made fun of that splinter of a bankai for condensing power into speed, but it had been a delight to find an opponent he could fight blade to claw, rather than getting wrapped up in games or shadows or useless kidō.

Sweat and blood streak them both, mixing just as thoroughly as their reiatsu soaks into the sand and air. Getsuga Tenshō nearly peels open Grimmjow’s chest; his Desgarrón strikes hard enough to show a strip of bone at Kurosaki’s collar before blood rushes forward to hide it. So it goes: trading one deathblow for another, neatly sidestepping quietus after quietus. Grimmjow wouldn’t have it any other way. Looks like Kurosaki wouldn’t, either.

And there’s a low hum that starts to grow, too: something Grimmjow doesn’t notice until he realizes that he can feel it deep in his bones, drawing out a resonance that’s only half-familiar. Kurosaki is slowly, slowly pushing his reiatsu into something _more_.

Grimmjow isn’t soft. He is the furthest thing from soft. His claws are caked in blood; his teeth ache to rip out Kurosaki’s throat. But he lets Kurosaki do this. He gives his enemy this inch that he needs. Curiosity outweighs survival, sometimes – and when he knows what’s coming, why wouldn’t he let it happen? All the more powerful a stone to whet himself on.

For all the incredible pressure that’s gathered, Kurosaki’s tipping point is so gentle: like a sigh, like gravity calling something back home. His reiatsu condenses; the vacuum it leaves in its wake kicks up sand and all the latent reishi in the atmosphere, curling in around him like a shroud, and Grimmjow’s hair blows up over his shoulder in a rough splash of color at the edge of his vision.

Every single instinct that Grimmjow has honed and drenched in blood screams at him, even though he expects it this time; this time, he isn’t being led blind on a vague promise, isn’t immediately staggered by the weight of reiatsu that shouldn’t exist. His patchwork soul shrieks with intimate knowledge of the food chain and his place in it: _soul reaper|danger|death_ colliding with _hunger|challenge|consume_ and the lucid roar of joy and recognition that deafens it all.

Ichigo still wears the imprint of his claws, five shallow, inch-long furrows etched in bright red against his dead-pale skin. His mismatched eyes burn bright.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow breathes. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the look I want to see in your eyes.”

“The one that makes you want to kill me?” The fucker has the gall to sound amused; Grimmjow bares his teeth in return, but it’s far too close to a grin.

“What else would I want from you other than your life?”

In response, Ichigo doesn’t quite smile, but the flickering wash of his reiatsu tells Grimmjow all he needs to know.

The next blow they trade booms. They come together with such force that the air around them dissipates and sand flies back to bare rock; ancient compressed reishi that hasn’t been touched by Hollows for centuries upon centuries, probably. The force of the blow is exhilarating. Grimmjow doesn’t know or care what kind of being Yhwach had to have been to shatter that zanpakutō, but if Ichigo made it into _this_ now, if he slaughtered that would-be king and ripped his way through the worlds to test his blade against Grimmjow, he can’t help but be perversely grateful for it.

They come together again, and this time the force cracks something deep in Grimmjow’s shoulder; the next time, Ichigo’s skin welts and tears just from the pressure of sand and reishi caught between them. It’s hard to reconcile that he’s got a blade, still. All of Grimmjow’s experience sings _Hollow_ when he sees Ichigo like this, Hollow and hungry and teeth-and-claws, a creature that ripped its way to power through sheer force of will.

It’s almost too much. _Almost_ almost. Ichigo is overbearing, an assault on Grimmjow’s senses that he can’t quite shake, a warning sign flashing so many different ways that they muddle together into no kind of warning at all, just a flame-borne hunger that makes no sense in his cold veins. The next Getsuga Tenshō comes at an angle, forcing Grimmjow to yield space or lose a hand, and only for the sake of a longer fight does he yield.

“Come on,” Ichigo pants, his outline rippling with reiatsu like it doesn’t know whether it should lay on his skin or lay into Grimmjow. (Grimmjow feels the same.) His lip is still split in this form, too. Grimmjow can still taste the warmth of him. “Your turn, Grimmjow. Show me what you’re really made of.”

“What makes you think I haven’t already?”

“Because you haven’t really tried to kill me yet.”

“Fuck you. Don’t goad me.”

“It’s true,” Ichigo protests. He spreads his hands; his zanpakutō is so dark it doesn’t even reflect the moonlight as it moves. His reiatsu, too, is a sucking shade of black, soft and velvet past its razor edge. “I meant it when I said I want to fight you. Everything you’ve got.” He takes a step forward. “I told you I want your life in my hands. I want my life in your hands too. What’s the point otherwise?”

“Ha!” The laugh barks up out of his throat, rough and wild. “Careful what you wish for, Soul Reaper. My hands weren’t meant for holding.”

He flexes his fingers pointedly, and doesn’t miss the way Ichigo’s eyes catch the movement, the way his chest tenses with anticipation. Good. This isn’t a time for wasting breath on lives in hands, this is a fight. And if Ichigo really wants to see everything Grimmjow’s got – damn, who is he to say no?

And for good measure: _fuck_ Ulquiorra. Figures he thought he was the only one.

Grimmjow casts a net over all the reiatsu he’s been spilling across blood-spattered sand and pulls it all back in, past the iron edge of his skin and back to the seat of where all his power lies, nestled in an endless ring of void. He can feel the iridescent lick of power settling, home, on his claws.

He lands a solid kick on Ichigo’s chest, backed by all the reiatsu coiled up under his muscles, and the monochrome scraps of his outline go flying a satisfying distance. It’s enough to give him the opening he needs.

It’s like taking a step backwards and a step forwards all at once. The mask over his brow crumbles to let a flame of reiatsu take its place; the bone shielding his body shivers and softens into familiar fur laced with reishi, and pitch pours from the hole in his gut to paint his legs the shade of void-black they’re supposed to be, dark and luminous as night.

 _This_ is what he was meant to be, not Aizen’s pathetic mimicry of Soul Reapers. Ichigo is staring unabashedly, wearing the same half-stunned expression that Grimmjow remembers from a scant handful of years ago. What a lousy opening. He takes it anyways, darts in close enough to feel Ichigo’s startled exhale against his cheek, and lets the reiatsu sheathing his claws rip through Ichigo’s shoulder.

Almost. He’s not fast enough to avoid it, but he’s fast enough to not lose a limb. The stunned expression is hardening into something equally familiar: determination. Maybe joy too, Grimmjow doesn’t know. But he does know what that echoing thrum of reiatsu means, and like this, dancing out of the way of another monstrous crescent of energy is as easy as breathing, even when they come faster than Grimmjow’s seen yet.

Ichigo is keeping up. If he hadn’t been, Grimmjow would have killed him already. No sense in fighting a disappointment, after all. There’s something else building alongside each Getsuga Tenshō, though; something that makes his claws sing a little brighter against Ichigo’s blade, something that makes them scrape a little bit deeper when they bite into his skin. He’s still powerful, definitely physically stronger than Grimmjow, and it would be infuriating if that strength didn’t close the gap between them. Speed to power, they’re evenly matched. Mostly.

That zanpakutō keeps drawing blood: not quite in retribution, but rather like it’s trying to find a wellspring. More fuel for the fire, Grimmjow thinks, tasting his own blood on his teeth, and he lets his claws grow red and dark.

And Ichigo – a fucking vision dressed in the impressions of Grimmjow’s claws, whiter than the sand and blacker than the night – has the same idea.

It hits him, what that building pressure is, at the same moment as Ichigo brings his sword up in an odd, nonsensical motion: almost like he’s saluting, almost like he’s preparing to slit open the air in front of him. Bare of the reiatsu that heralds Getsuga Tenshō. Slick with his own blood.

 _You fucker_ , Grimmjow thinks wildly as black-red-white light builds in the atom-wide gap between horn and swordpoint. _You fucker_. _One of us._ He leaps forward as fast as Sonido will take him – faster – and shreds Ichigo’s arm nearly to the bone as he knocks the zanpakutō (Zangetsu, it has a name, it’s not just a fragment of his soul waiting for him) away from the horn and that energy dissipates with a dull boom.

The strikes that follow are nearly frantic. He knows he cannot allow Ichigo to do this; Ichigo knows Grimmjow will do anything to stop him. It becomes a game of power, not speed, and Grimmjow roars with anger and joy and other, worse things as Ichigo finally starts to land blow after blow, cutting into the meat of his thigh, slamming the flat of his blade against his shoulder, and it’s the crack of bone that finally heralds the opening Ichigo had worked so hard to make.

There will be no escaping this. There will be no gap to close between them, nowhere to slip past. Instead, he digs his claws into one of the still-bleeding cuts on his thigh and floods Desgarrón till it’s the same velvet shade as his hands, till it matches the endless pitch of Ichigo’s reiatsu, oscuro e interminable.

Ichigo’s Gran Rey Cero – there is nothing else it could be, not with the weight of his blood added to that endless reiatsu – is so overwhelming, it feels like he’s getting his chest split open by a kid scared half-witless in the Living World all over again. His instincts fray apart, then come back together; there’s a breaking point to this peerless edge, and all he needs to do is find it. If it’s anything like that mask of his was—

 _There_. Grimmjow twists Desgarrón into a shearing crosswise blow and Ichigo’s Cero shatters.

Unfortunately—

Unfortunately.

Potential energy does not simply disappear. Their Ceros rip open the air between them, distorting the fabric of Hueco Mundo’s reality so powerfully that Grimmjow tastes Garganta’s howling vacuum on his tongue for a handful of seconds before the air starts to clear, smoking scraps of their reiatsu mixed so thoroughly it’s almost as if there’s a third creature here, waiting to prey on them both.

Ichigo’s face is far too expressive. His shock is clear, and so is his determination, and so is the creeping edge of his exhaustion.

“Cero Oscuras?” he calls across the dunes that separate them. His voice isn’t thin, even this far away, but it rasps with exertion.

“I was a fucking Espada,” Grimmjow spits back. “Stop thinking Ulquiorra was the only one who could do anything around here. Just because he had a particular bone to pick with that girl—”

Getsuga Tenshō interrupts him; he bats it aside easily. That Cero must have taken more out of Ichigo than it seemed. Maybe. Ichigo has a way of upending that kind of thinking.

“Okay, fine,” Ichigo says, darting in with a strike that’s more reiatsu than blade. It stings against Grimmjow’s claws. “Another release and bigger Ceros. Or… claws. Looks like we both learned some new tricks.”

He’s smiling slightly. Grimmjow wants to wipe it off his face, bite his lip again so it’ll bleed if he tries to smile again, so he could taste blood in his mouth again. Again. Again. They rush together again and Grimmjow’s souls sing in concert as muscle meets air, as blood slowly turns the sand below them black.

There are certain things that come with experience that no instinct can teach; there are certain things that come with instinct that no amount of experience can replace. Grimmjow knows precisely how long it takes for Desgarrón to grow dark and heavy on his claws, and for Gran Rey Cero to compress enough to be exactly as lethal as it should be.

Ichigo doesn’t. It’s clear that he thinks he does. There are dark ribbons painting the fingers clenched around his hilt, and they flash dark-and-light as he brings Zangetsu up to the tip of his horn again. Point-blank.

It’s a good attempt. It would have destroyed Grimmjow if he’d done this the last time they’d fought. It’s no surprise that, in the end, _this_ was what vaporized Ulquiorra.

Ichigo is stronger. Every base instinct in every scrap of soul that makes up Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez knows this. His blood howls with this knowledge.

But Grimmjow is faster.

Desgarrón Oscuro rips through the beginnings of Ichigo’s next Cero before it can properly form, knocks away Zangetsu, and cuts through the very tip of his horn. He’s ready for the explosion this time, for the mix of two different Ceros and Ichigo’s Hollow-and-other reiatsu spiking out to drown everything around them. When his body impacts against the ground, his skin is human-warm against pale sand, covered in splashes of dark dry blood and ribbons of brighter, newer red.

Faster. But only just.

Exhaustion makes the edges of his vision swim. It’s been a long, long time since he was last pushed like this. Grimmjow calls Pantera back into his hand and falls to the ground, feet planted over Ichigo. In a rush, his injuries make themselves known: his shoulder does not work as it should, his thigh is slick with blood and will not support his weight, his chest is burning, _burning_ with flesh laid open and broken bones underneath. His mask feels oddly heavy against his jaw, and his brow oddly light in turn.

He brings Pantera’s tip to rest at the dip between Ichigo’s collarbones. Right where dried blood paints over one clawmark. He can see the echoes of his own teeth bruising underneath tender human skin. Ichigo stares up at him with neither challenge nor submission nor acceptance in his eyes.

Slowly, very slowly, he raises a bruised, blood-streaked hand, and gently closes it over Pantera’s blade.

“Alright,” he sighs. “Alright. Yours, Grimmjow. You win this one.”

Grimmjow looks down his blade at the too-soft calloused palm wrapped around it, holding the tip exactly where it is, and then past that at a face that’s settling into lines of strange joy.

This is it? This is it. He’s beaten Kurosaki. He gets to wear this victory in his bones until the end of time. But—

“You’re weaker when you don’t have something to fight for,” he snarls, and Ichigo lets out a slightly pathetic, half-rasped _oh_ in response. Grudgingly, Grimmjow adds, “But you fight better.”

“If we keep fighting like this,” Ichigo croaks, “I’ll be way better at sustaining that Hollow form. No one else can keep up with me.”

Grimmjow leans down, ignores the screaming pain across his thigh, his ribs, his back, and hauls Ichigo unceremoniously to his feet.

“Sounds like a deal,” Grimmjow purrs, splitting his mask into a grin mere centimeters from Ichigo’s face, and Ichigo – Ichigo has the fucking _gall_ to let his face soften into a smile, the same vulnerable, terrible softness in his eyes as the last time they’d spilled blood in Hueco Mundo. He’s loose-limbed and dripping blood; the only reason he’s upright at all is his weight tipped clumsily against Grimmjow’s chest. He sighs, something liquid rattling in his lungs, and his breath is nearly scorching.

“If we go back–” Ichigo pauses to wince. “–back to the training room, Urahara made some stuff… helps with healing.”

“Soul Society?” Ichigo hums something halfway affirmative against his collar. The heat of him is inching close to setting off some instinctive warning, a half-remembered sense memory of human bodies programmed not to touch something too hot. “Huh. You heal like us normally?”

“Hollow? Kinda.” Ichigo’s weight has slowly doubled against him. Grimmjow isn’t sure how much longer _he’ll_ be upright. His knees are starting to bend. It's been a while since someone exhausted him like this. “Usually Orihime or someone with kid–oh, fuck—"

Ichigo crumples, and so does Grimmjow. His muscles tremble even as his shins impact against the sand, and then he finds himself helpless under Ichigo’s dead (wishful thinking) weight. His legs fold awkwardly backwards, something in one knee popping, and the thigh that had been ripped open loses all sensation.

Night spins on above them. Ichigo falls unconscious seconds after they topple to the ground, and Grimmjow clings to alertness only through sheer force of will. It wouldn’t do for anyone to find them like this, sprawled together in a laughable satire of some kind of lovers’ embrace, blood and reiatsu draining sluggishly into the ground. If Grimmjow closes his eyes just to listen to the soft thump of a heartbeat, there is no one around to witness it; if he wants to dig his claws into the muscle of his back and stitch them together, there is no one to watch him succumb to the urge.

Dawn never comes in Hueco Mundo, but daybreak feels close anyways.

* * *

Ichigo doesn’t wake up until Grimmjow dumps his limp body unceremoniously into the pit full of steaming water. He sputters almost comically for a fraction of a second, and then his attention sharpens lethally, weighing down the air – and finally his eyes meet Grimmjow’s, and all that intent bleeds away like nothing.

“You took us back?” he asks. His voice is raspy, muddled.

“Clearly.” Grimmjow sheds his clothes just as unceremoniously as he’d shed Ichigo’s weight from across his shoulders, and fastidiously does not let his gaze linger on that damnedly open look in Ichigo’s eyes. “What, you wanted to bleed out in Hueco Mundo?”

The water – absolutely reeking of reishi – is scalding as he limps his way in, overwhelmingly hot in a way that’s completely different from the sensation of skin against his. Ichigo watches him then shifts gingerly, testing his shoulder and chest, and then he slowly starts to peel off the thick fabric clinging to him. Those weird black strips of condensed reishi still lie against his skin. When he's done piling his clothes in a sopping pile, he fills his lungs and dunks his head under the water; steam fractures into tiny luminous things that cling to his eyelashes as he resurfaces. Grimmjow watches water slide slowly down his cheek.

“How’d you even get in here?” Ichigo asks.

“Same way you got out.” Grimmjow follows suit and dips his head under the water too; immediately, his scalp stings, and he’s overwhelmed by the urge to sneeze. He resurfaces to Ichigo’s face closer to his, albeit tentatively.

“And the first time? Who let you in here?”

“Catgi–”

“–Yoruichi, great.” Ichigo rolls his eyes and grimaces. “Alright, one more question.”

“Make it worth your while,” Grimmjow says. He finds a smooth stretch of rock, leans his head back, and closes his eyes. All his skin itches; his thigh is burning. “I’m tired of talking.”

“What made you fight me now?” Ichigo’s voice is low, intent, with that same current of heat it had before. Grimmjow likes it like that. Matches his eyes.

“What's the point of a fight if you don't want it with your whole body?” Ichigo is silent; Grimmjow opens his eyes again to find him even closer. The bright water only makes the bruises along his neck stand out darker. “It's the same as when you were in Hueco Mundo the first time. Wasn't any fun till you realized you wanted it.”

Finally, finally, Ichigo reaches out to touch him. Hesitant, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but that’s fucking absurd because instinct has always driven his hands straight into Grimmjow’s most vulnerable corners. Ichigo’s fingertips find the edge of the scar that still bisects his chest, and then they travel, unsure, to the crescent that Nnoitra’s ridiculous _thing_ had left. The sheer fury he’d felt watching Ichigo defend him is still potent, even veiled by memory. The fucking audacity of assuming he needed protection. His touch travels upwards, inwards, and Grimmjow tips his chin down automatically to shield his throat. Ichigo’s eyes meet his immediately, and Grimmjow knows he understands. Not insult; just instinct.

There’s an irritating, distant hesitation in the set of Ichigo’s jaw. Grimmjow sighs, lowers his head, and bites at a strip of skin Ichigo’s wrist not covered by that strange ribbon of reishi, worries the skin between his teeth, tastes all the strange power in the water as it works, even now, to staunch the bruise that will form.

"Don't make me an obligation for you to take care of,” he says. Plain fucking words. If Ichigo doesn’t get it after this, then he really is too thickheaded. “Do it because you want to."

But it clicks, visibly, in his eyes; an inch of heat, a mile of satisfaction. Ichigo closes the distance between them, lip still split, blood still dried at the corner of his mouth. Not a friendly peck by any means, nor is it anything like the heated collisions before, but finally a motion deserving of its name. Grimmjow allows it, and allows Ichigo’s hand at the back of his head, and allows his palm to move against Ichigo’s chest, fingertips running against the raw-edged ridges that this reishi-laced water has not yet stitched shut.

There are still too many thoughts lurking behind Ichigo’s eyes and he wants to erase them all until Ichigo is nothing but instinct again and a body responding just to simple want, to simple hunger. His teeth aren’t as sharp, now, but they still draw out soft muted sounds that echo across water; his claws are sheathed, but there’s pleasure in blunt fingertips making soft skin give way. The animal roar in him wants to bite down and bleed dry all the power in Ichigo’s veins, but something dormant and slow whispers, and then what? Never taste this again? So much better to let him live and savor it again, and again, and again.

So he opens his mouth, not to devour but to welcome, and marks this down in some immutable corner of his being: first of many, first of many, first of many. They’ll have lifetimes to test if this will be enough to sate his hunger.

(It won’t be. He is endless. But the thing is – so is Ichigo.)

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a "short" and "humorous" 5+1 fic. if you look and count hard enough, you can still see the bones in there, somewhere.
> 
> thank you to everyone who cheered me on as i was writing this, and who listened to me gracelessly cannonball into bleach after, like, 12 years.


End file.
